The Michael Knowles Show - May 27, 2023


Top Male Porn Star's Shocking Story Of Suicide and Hope ｜ Joshua Broome


Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 1 minute

Words per minute

177.77596

Word count

21,662

Sentence count

1,730

Harmful content

Misogyny

37

sentences flagged

Hate speech

25

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Joshua Broom is a former porn star who won the award for best male porn star. He tells his story of how he became a porn star, how he got into the industry, and how he was able to become one of the most famous porn stars in the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 You know, I did a thousand films over about a six-year period.
00:00:03.840 You had to have a current, like, full panel, like, STD and AIDS test.
00:00:08.780 You would look, is the test clear, great, and that's what I would know about the girl
00:00:13.660 until I walked into the room and had sex with her. 1.00
00:00:22.440 When I was a teenage boy, I thought there were certain jobs that were probably a lot of fun.
00:00:27.140 Being an astronaut was probably one of them.
00:00:30.200 Being, I don't know, a competitive surfer, that seemed kind of cool.
00:00:33.700 And of course, every teenage boy thinks, man, what would it be like to be a porn star?
00:00:38.200 That's got to be kind of crazy, huh?
00:00:40.040 Boy, wouldn't that be a great job.
00:00:43.300 That was not my calling.
00:00:44.840 I probably didn't, you know, I'm not like the most muscular guy in the world.
00:00:48.080 Probably wasn't going to happen.
00:00:49.840 And probably, I think, in retrospect, that's a good thing.
00:00:52.940 I am joined today, however, by someone who did become a porn star
00:00:56.740 and who became the top porn star in the world, won the award.
00:01:01.860 Whatever the award is for top porn star, he won it.
00:01:04.340 That would be Joshua Broom.
00:01:06.320 Turned out the job was not all teenage boys might think it would be cracked up to be.
00:01:10.700 Joshua, thank you for coming on the show.
00:01:12.280 Yeah, glad to be here.
00:01:12.940 So, I'm pleased to say, for all my sins, I'm not familiar with your work.
00:01:20.140 Okay.
00:01:20.500 But I was talking to some people who are familiar with your work.
00:01:23.960 Okay.
00:01:24.340 And you were not just a guy who did a porn movie or two.
00:01:30.340 Right.
00:01:31.440 You were a big guy in this industry.
00:01:34.640 Yeah.
00:01:34.940 You made it to the top of the industry.
00:01:37.400 Yeah.
00:01:37.600 So, one, how the hell do you get involved in that kind of a thing?
00:01:41.840 And then, how'd you get out?
00:01:43.620 Yeah.
00:01:44.260 So, from a big picture standpoint, I got in the industry by thinking, you know,
00:01:50.800 okay, someone who is in the acting and modeling industry,
00:01:54.120 if I put myself in closer proximity to the industry that I wanted to be in,
00:01:57.860 it would make sense.
00:01:58.900 It would make, you know, me getting jobs easier.
00:02:01.560 So, I did that and it worked.
00:02:03.020 I got an agent.
00:02:04.100 So, I was predominantly doing some runway along with some print and then commercials
00:02:09.640 and stuff like that.
00:02:10.760 I was an aspiring actor, not acting very much, but had a reel, had an agent,
00:02:15.740 had a lot of aspirations.
00:02:17.300 Which is more than most actors, actually.
00:02:20.060 Yeah.
00:02:20.160 Yeah.
00:02:20.380 I was doing it.
00:02:21.400 To be represented and to be auditioning.
00:02:22.920 Yeah.
00:02:22.940 Yeah.
00:02:23.080 100%.
00:02:23.400 I was doing well.
00:02:24.200 Like, there was no reason to make the decision that I made because a lot of
00:02:27.920 people would say, you know, I needed money, I needed to do this,
00:02:31.340 or there was some kind of trauma, you know, that there was nothing pointing me to that
00:02:36.460 direction.
00:02:37.460 Yet, I found myself there.
00:02:38.800 But to answer your question, I move out to Hollywood.
00:02:41.920 Like many other people, you're pursuing your dream, but you need to do something to
00:02:46.120 mediate your expenses.
00:02:47.420 So, I found myself working at a restaurant.
00:02:49.520 And in that restaurant, three girls sat down. 0.98
00:02:52.060 There were these beautiful girls and I go over to them and I thought, you know,
00:02:55.140 maybe I'll get their number or a good tip or whatever.
00:02:57.520 And they invite me to meet with their agent.
00:03:01.960 And they ask me if I want to be an actor.
00:03:04.480 And I'm like, yes, you know, this is a great opportunity for me.
00:03:07.060 Maybe they're working on a project or maybe they know a casting director or
00:03:10.300 something like that.
00:03:12.180 But they're like, no, no, we're talking about pornography.
00:03:14.900 And I was like, I never considered it, but I was very intrigued.
00:03:19.600 And being someone, you know, I didn't have a reason to say no.
00:03:23.400 So, I said, sure, I'll meet with your agent.
00:03:27.060 And I meet with this agent and he was like, he asked me three questions.
00:03:31.220 He asked me, what did my upbringing look like?
00:03:34.600 You know, how did I grow up?
00:03:36.300 What was I doing in LA?
00:03:38.420 And what did I hope to accomplish?
00:03:40.180 And I was like, well, I grew up, you know, pretty much just me and my mom.
00:03:43.840 And I want to be an actor.
00:03:46.860 So, that's why I'm here.
00:03:48.840 And I guess what I want to accomplish is to be famous.
00:03:52.180 And he was like, perfect.
00:03:53.860 You know, I can make your name famous.
00:03:56.020 You'll make, you know, X amount of dollars.
00:03:59.160 And then it actually is advantageous for you that you have this acting background
00:04:03.060 because the pornography industry is shifting from just making these, like,
00:04:08.000 one-off scenes where they're parodying movies and there are scripts and all the stuff.
00:04:12.840 So, if you have acting experience and you can bring that into that, it'll be great.
00:04:17.680 There'll be, you know, a great runway for you to have all the things that you said you wanted.
00:04:21.440 So, being someone who's naive and didn't really have a good foundation to say no,
00:04:29.160 I was like, well, how big of a deal could it be if I do one?
00:04:32.820 Right.
00:04:33.280 And that one, it, you know, for lack of better terms, you know, even it was like 2006, went viral.
00:04:41.660 So, like 500,000 views back then, massive.
00:04:46.400 And very quickly, I have an agent that I begged to represent me,
00:04:51.360 calling me saying that they can't represent me anymore because they don't want to be associated with my likeness.
00:04:56.240 So, your legit acting agent says, I'm dumb.
00:04:59.580 So, you sign up with the porn agency, you do the scene, in order to help your mainstream acting career.
00:05:06.960 And then, as a result of that, you become so famous that your mainstream agent dumps you.
00:05:11.060 Yeah.
00:05:11.360 I want to go back to that.
00:05:12.460 Yeah.
00:05:12.940 Those three questions.
00:05:13.980 Sure, sure.
00:05:14.480 That the guy asks you.
00:05:15.520 So, I get the latter two questions.
00:05:18.000 Yeah.
00:05:18.800 What are you doing here?
00:05:19.500 What do you want to accomplish?
00:05:20.380 Where do you see yourself?
00:05:20.980 What about that first question?
00:05:23.680 Why did he ask you that first question about your childhood?
00:05:27.500 Yeah.
00:05:27.640 And how did you give him the answer that he was looking for?
00:05:33.320 Yeah.
00:05:33.580 I mean, I think, you know, in retrospect, it was, how can I manipulate you?
00:05:39.620 You know, so for me, saying, okay, I'm from a broken home.
00:05:42.920 Yeah.
00:05:43.260 You didn't have a father.
00:05:44.560 You probably didn't have leadership.
00:05:45.800 You probably are looking to prove something or looking to find something.
00:05:50.020 I can take that want and that desire.
00:05:53.160 And if I tell them something that's affirming, which is an innate desire that exists in each
00:05:59.240 and every person, like you want to be affirmed.
00:06:01.420 You want to feel loved.
00:06:02.860 You want to feel like you matter.
00:06:05.180 And those are good things, but if they're manipulated, they'll lead you down a path that
00:06:09.020 you never intended to go.
00:06:11.280 How common is that in porn?
00:06:13.520 Is it just across the board?
00:06:14.780 Everybody comes from it.
00:06:15.580 Across the board.
00:06:15.980 Because at the end of the day, when you lay your head down on a pillow, it doesn't matter
00:06:20.240 how much money is in your bank account.
00:06:22.240 Like no one wants to be a prostitute.
00:06:25.060 Like no one desires that.
00:06:26.500 No one is, regardless of what you say, like if someone's addicted to pornography and, you
00:06:31.920 know, they believe the lie to be true is that, you know, it's, this will be fun.
00:06:37.840 This will be this.
00:06:38.680 This will be that.
00:06:39.480 If you believe that to be a real reality, like sure might, someone might say, I want
00:06:45.280 to do this, but no one seeks out that.
00:06:48.260 Yeah.
00:06:48.920 But people do seek out fame.
00:06:50.720 Sure.
00:06:51.120 And they do.
00:06:51.560 And what's really interesting about your story is often you will hear female porn stars. 0.79
00:06:59.500 Yeah.
00:06:59.820 Later on say, I was abused.
00:07:01.620 This was terrible.
00:07:02.600 Yeah.
00:07:02.800 Of course.
00:07:03.800 Of course that's the case.
00:07:04.940 Men and women are different.
00:07:05.820 And women are abused, it would seem, much more by the industry.
00:07:10.920 You don't hear it as much from the men.
00:07:13.160 And you think, well, men, we can kind of divorce sex from our emotional life.
00:07:17.580 And oh, men, you know, we just get the fun part of everything.
00:07:20.280 Yeah.
00:07:21.100 But porn wrecked you too.
00:07:24.600 Yeah, 100%.
00:07:25.400 I would say it wrecks everyone.
00:07:28.260 Because if you operate in a way that's contradictory to the way that you were wired to operate,
00:07:36.600 the byproduct of that is there's going to be significant trauma mentally and emotionally.
00:07:42.740 And regardless of if you choose to suppress that and what that might look like in your
00:07:47.640 life practically, that's probably going to be different from person to person.
00:07:50.920 But you don't live that life and go and be healthy unless you deal with that.
00:07:56.600 So you agree to do the scene.
00:08:00.540 Yeah.
00:08:01.020 It goes viral.
00:08:02.160 It goes viral.
00:08:03.160 And then my agent gets a, well, my agent calls me.
00:08:07.060 They had come to know that that happened.
00:08:09.900 And then a few weeks later, something probably even worse for me, my mom calls me.
00:08:15.520 And she's like, well, your uncle said that someone at work told him that I had done a
00:08:21.840 porn movie.
00:08:23.120 Ugh.
00:08:23.940 And I was humiliated.
00:08:25.720 Ugh.
00:08:26.600 And for me personally, like my mom had me when she was 16 and she made significant sacrifices
00:08:33.620 for the things that we had.
00:08:35.340 And when I started pursuing modeling and acting, that started at 13.
00:08:38.500 So getting comp cards, getting headshots, you know, like I didn't talk the way that I
00:08:44.620 talk now.
00:08:45.380 It's like I was very, like I grew up in a really small town in South Carolina.
00:08:48.820 Like I couldn't, I said like, I made up words that my grandma would say, like mater and tater,
00:08:54.720 like super country bumpkin.
00:08:57.360 And so I did all these things that my mom really couldn't afford, but she made a way because
00:09:01.740 she wanted me to have a better life than she did.
00:09:04.000 And it was something that I was passionate about.
00:09:05.720 And she did everything that she could to provide for me.
00:09:09.160 And yet I found myself squandering those things.
00:09:12.520 The equity that we gained along the way, it just kind of blew up.
00:09:19.520 So you have this phone call with your mother.
00:09:21.120 Yeah.
00:09:21.640 Is it a sort of, I'm never speaking to you again, or is it a, why are you doing this job?
00:09:26.420 So my mom, my mom, the even keel all the way, she's like Joshua Luke.
00:09:31.620 So growing up in the South, like Joshua, like, you know, you're okay, Joshua Luke, you know,
00:09:36.960 you better heighten your awareness, Joshua Luke Broom, you run, you know?
00:09:40.960 So she was just like Joshua Luke Broom, like, why would you do that?
00:09:45.100 It's like, I love you, but you are better than that.
00:09:48.660 And I think that's something that you have to wrestle with in your life.
00:09:52.260 You know, in some aspect, someone, you'll make a decision that leaves you at a crossroads
00:09:57.280 and someone in your life hopefully is going to say, here's a better way.
00:10:04.040 If you've compromised or you've done something that you shouldn't have done, that you messed up,
00:10:09.360 and now you're at a fork in the road and you're having this conversation with someone,
00:10:14.140 it's like, okay, this is what you should do, but it's going to require change.
00:10:18.860 It's going to require hard work, and it's so much easier to not do the hard work,
00:10:24.860 change directions, do whatever needs to be done to, you know, change the direction that you're going.
00:10:31.200 So I chose to, you know, push her away, even though she was saying, I love you.
00:10:36.900 That was her response.
00:10:37.580 I love you, but you're better than that.
00:10:38.980 Why would you do that?
00:10:40.360 You just squandered everything that you've worked for the last, you know, almost 10 years.
00:10:45.120 Right, right.
00:10:46.000 But you got one thing you wanted, which is you got fame.
00:10:48.820 Sure.
00:10:49.300 Did you get money?
00:10:50.480 Is the money any good or no?
00:10:52.160 I mean, it's almost like a personal trainer.
00:10:54.600 So a personal trainer that works at, you know, LA Fitness probably makes $8 or $9 an hour,
00:11:01.460 and they don't get paid.
00:11:04.400 So, like, you charge $700, $800 a person for personal training.
00:11:08.480 They don't get that money.
00:11:09.780 The organization gets that money, and they get an hourly rate.
00:11:14.320 Right.
00:11:14.580 But if you are, you know, if you start personal training on your own, and you're, like, paying
00:11:20.480 a gym, you know, a fee, and you can make money that way.
00:11:24.140 But my point is, some personal trainers will make $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 a year, and
00:11:29.560 some personal trainers will make $30,000.
00:11:31.580 Yeah.
00:11:32.020 So porn is the same way.
00:11:33.740 If you are in demand, you can charge more, and how much you work is dependent on you.
00:11:39.360 It's just like that, just like the regular, like, acting or any other talent.
00:11:43.680 Like any industry, I guess.
00:11:44.700 Yeah.
00:11:45.060 Yeah.
00:11:45.360 If you're good at your trade, and there's a demand, you can charge more money, and if
00:11:49.920 there's a demand, you'll work more.
00:11:51.560 And that was my case, where I was, you know, I did 1,000 films over about a six-year period.
00:11:57.480 Wow.
00:11:58.100 And for me...
00:11:59.140 How many days a week are you working at that?
00:12:00.760 So I'm doing, like, 20, 25 films a month.
00:12:04.400 Whoa.
00:12:05.360 So you're working, like, every day.
00:12:06.980 Yeah.
00:12:07.780 It just becomes something that was incredibly monotonous, you know, like, I would show up
00:12:13.480 to set and, you know, do what I was paid to do and go about my business.
00:12:18.760 Did you know these girls?
00:12:20.280 I mean, you...
00:12:21.860 So in the industry, there's, like, 30 to 40 guys that work all the time, and there's
00:12:28.740 just a constant influx of girls.
00:12:31.400 I would say, even when I was in the industry, there was not, like, a superstar.
00:12:36.260 That was, like, days of old, because it's so saturated that people are, you know, neurologically,
00:12:42.660 you get that, you know, that dopamine hit to your synapse, and you're looking...
00:12:46.540 But you're always looking for new, and you're looking for more.
00:12:49.360 So the girls are, you know, constantly evolving, and the guys don't matter as much.
00:12:54.420 Yeah.
00:12:54.820 But for a director standpoint, so a director is, more often than not, there's a production
00:13:00.300 company that he has a deal with, and then director hires talent, puts together a film,
00:13:05.800 gets it edited, and hands it back to the production company.
00:13:08.660 Right.
00:13:09.080 So all the weight is on the director to get this film done.
00:13:13.220 So if you hire a guy that can't do the job, then there's no product.
00:13:18.300 Yeah.
00:13:18.500 So you just squandered $20,000, $30,000, because everyone else is getting paid no matter what,
00:13:23.640 because everyone else did their job, but the guy didn't.
00:13:25.620 So the guy is the only person at risk of not getting paid.
00:13:29.800 So what the directors would do, they will find, like, five to ten guys that they hire
00:13:35.880 on a consistent basis, and those will be the guys they hire every single time.
00:13:40.280 So that's why I was shooting so much.
00:13:41.460 I just became...
00:13:42.820 Reliable.
00:13:43.800 One of the...
00:13:44.740 Yeah, there was nothing special about me.
00:13:47.120 It's like, for me, in that industry, that was full of people who, you know, had significant
00:13:53.140 trauma, that had drug problems, you know, like, you name it.
00:13:57.700 I was just a normal guy that took my job seriously.
00:14:00.880 I showed up on time.
00:14:02.160 I did what I was supposed to do, and I didn't cause any problems.
00:14:05.520 So during this time, you're not addicted to drugs.
00:14:08.920 You're not falling into these vices that are traditionally associated with porn.
00:14:12.200 Yeah, so for me, it's interesting, because I'm someone who's incredibly extroverted, but
00:14:16.480 I found myself, because you're so exposed when you're doing them, it's like, the last
00:14:23.100 thing you want to do is be around people, really.
00:14:25.980 So I found myself, I wouldn't go to parties or anything like that unless I was being paid
00:14:31.420 to make an appearance or something like that.
00:14:33.260 I was, you know, pretty much a recluse.
00:14:36.660 So you're working in the industry.
00:14:38.720 Yeah.
00:14:38.880 So there's this steady stream of girls coming in. 1.00
00:14:41.760 What is the relationship like when the cameras are off between the guys and the girls in
00:14:47.380 the industry?
00:14:48.720 Did you have any qualms about, these girls are obviously very damaged people? 1.00
00:14:55.780 Yeah.
00:14:56.620 Or is it just, oh, hi, nice to meet you.
00:14:58.840 Okay, we're going to go do our job now and, you know, see you next time.
00:15:01.440 Well, if you get rid of the introduction and the exit.
00:15:08.000 Yeah.
00:15:08.260 So, I mean, literally, so the way that a normal scene would work is the director is going to
00:15:13.800 shoot something called pretty girls, and it's just photos of the girl, and then you would
00:15:19.820 come in and you would take photos with the girl, and then you would leave, and then you
00:15:25.540 would just walk into the room.
00:15:26.680 Like, there's, like, the only thing I knew about the girl is her legal name and the fact
00:15:31.320 that, you know, you had to have a current, like, full panel, like, STD and AIDS test.
00:15:37.080 So that had to be current.
00:15:38.200 So every 21 days, you had to have a new test.
00:15:41.640 So you would look, do the IDs, match the test, is the test clear, great, and that's what I
00:15:49.440 would know about the girl until I walked into the room and had sex with her. 1.00
00:15:52.500 And then, like, the guys were taking erectile dysfunction medication, the girls were using 0.72
00:15:56.960 lube or numbing cream.
00:15:59.320 It was so far from anything that was remotely intimate.
00:16:03.880 Wow.
00:16:04.020 So was the byproduct of you being in proximity?
00:16:06.720 People, like, do people end up dating?
00:16:08.540 Sure.
00:16:09.500 But who else are you going to date?
00:16:10.820 Right.
00:16:11.300 You know, like, there's no girl out there that's going to be okay. 1.00
00:16:14.360 And, I mean, in certain scenarios, sure, but there's no legitimate relationship happening
00:16:20.740 outside of someone who's spending time in that industry.
00:16:24.020 So you would start dating.
00:16:26.100 And this, for me, was really detrimental mentally.
00:16:30.380 So you're dating someone.
00:16:32.160 And so I'm dating a girl.
00:16:34.220 We've been dating for, you know, a little over a year.
00:16:36.740 She's popular.
00:16:37.640 I'm popular.
00:16:38.280 And we're, of course, like, friends.
00:16:41.300 I'm friends with the other guys in the industry because we're around each other.
00:16:44.220 So who else?
00:16:45.060 So now you're sitting at dinner with me and my girlfriend and him and his girlfriend.
00:16:49.960 He had sex with my girlfriend today.
00:16:52.240 And I had sex with his girlfriend yesterday. 0.57
00:16:54.560 And we're sitting there pretending that we're in a monotonous, you know, a monogamous relationship.
00:16:59.340 And it's all fine because it's just work.
00:17:02.680 And the impact that has on you mentally and emotionally suppressing reality is so destructive.
00:17:11.780 And, Michael, to be honest, like, I mean, 30 people, I mean, we can touch on this a little
00:17:15.840 bit later, but 30 people that I knew, I knew their real names, I knew things about them,
00:17:23.820 30 people since I got out of the industry, I got out of the industry about 11 years ago
00:17:28.700 have taken their life, either suicide or overdose.
00:17:31.880 And it's because, more often than not, the girls, there's a common trajectory. 1.00
00:17:37.900 It's a girl gets in the industry, she becomes popular, and then the agent has the girl fill
00:17:44.600 out some stuff, and you have a no list.
00:17:48.020 And this no list is, you know, I'm not willing to do certain things.
00:17:53.760 X, Y, Z.
00:17:54.500 Don't want to do gay stuff or something. 1.00
00:17:55.580 Right.
00:17:55.980 Or, I mean, for girls, it's, like, anal, and it's crazy because, like, these identity 0.98
00:18:01.420 factors, you're placating aspects of people's identity, and you're making them genres of
00:18:08.860 pornography.
00:18:10.180 Like, you know, it's like, for example, interracial porn is not interracial porn.
00:18:15.620 It's specifically any other race with a black man across the board.
00:18:21.560 Like, that's interracial porn, which is incredibly racist.
00:18:23.820 It's not like a white guy and a black girl.
00:18:25.240 Right.
00:18:25.620 It doesn't, yeah, if it's a white guy and a black girl, it's not interracial, which is 0.68
00:18:28.920 insane.
00:18:29.400 It makes no sense.
00:18:30.100 Right, right.
00:18:30.760 It's, like, blatantly racist.
00:18:31.520 But it's just a specific fetish or something.
00:18:33.800 Yeah, yeah.
00:18:34.240 I mean, yeah, all these niches become, you know, but I say that to say, so these girls 0.99
00:18:40.820 say, I don't want to do X, Y, and Z, and then they become popular, and their popularity
00:18:45.340 tapers off some, and their agent goes to different studios, and it's like, well, how much would
00:18:51.040 you pay for this girl to do this thing that she hasn't done yet? 1.00
00:18:56.060 Because there's this novelty to it because she hasn't done it.
00:18:59.300 Because people know that she says, this is on my no list.
00:19:03.420 Yeah, well, because the-
00:19:04.460 Because you don't see her in these-
00:19:05.620 Right, but what happens is the agent goes to the studio and auctions off this thing that
00:19:11.080 she doesn't want to do, and then the agent comes back to the girl and says, hey, I know
00:19:16.200 you haven't been working as much lately, but this studio just reached out to me, and if
00:19:21.420 you'd be willing to do this thing that's on your no list, they want to give you $50,000,
00:19:26.580 and you'll become relevant again.
00:19:30.660 What do you think?
00:19:31.860 And then she does it, and then it becomes normalized, and then there's no allure to it anymore, and
00:19:37.760 now it's just something that she does.
00:19:39.440 And all those things on the list, she eventually does them.
00:19:42.140 And then, in addition to that, the agent, he also has an escorting agency, which is glamorized
00:19:49.360 prostitution, where he's essentially selling this girl, it's sex trafficking, he's selling
00:19:54.340 this girl on a site to regular people, and just because there's a check and that person's 1.00
00:20:00.160 getting an STD test, it's justifiable, and now she's doing that.
00:20:05.840 Is that common, too?
00:20:07.000 This is normal, across the board.
00:20:10.440 Like, anyone that becomes popular in any capacity, this is what happens.
00:20:16.840 And then the phone stops ringing as the popularity dissipates.
00:20:21.940 Right.
00:20:22.480 And then eventually, they feature dance.
00:20:24.760 So feature dancing is at a strip club, you would, if someone would have some kind of name,
00:20:30.480 there would be some novelty around them, which would bring people in, and they'd pay them
00:20:34.420 a fee on top of whatever tips they would get.
00:20:36.820 But that's, like, bottom of the barrel.
00:20:38.500 That's, like, them, like, holding on for dear life.
00:20:40.780 But eventually, the phone stops ringing.
00:20:45.140 And they've been told for five years, which is crazy, so girls start to age out of the
00:20:49.960 industry around 30.
00:20:51.920 So, but these girls, they've been told for five years, this is who you are, you can't 0.85
00:20:58.360 do anything else, no one else is going to want you, you're going to have to continue
00:21:01.780 to compromise so that you can become relevant again.
00:21:05.840 Once all the compromise is gone, you're left with this scary thing, because if you believe
00:21:11.160 a lie to be true, it's true to you.
00:21:13.640 So this girl believes my worth is indicative of me selling myself for sex. 0.55
00:21:19.700 There's nothing else that I can ever do.
00:21:21.900 No man's ever going to want to marry me.
00:21:23.800 There's no organization that's ever going to want me to contribute to it, because I'm
00:21:27.740 worthless.
00:21:28.240 I'm dirty.
00:21:28.820 I'm damaged goods, this stuff's always going to be on the internet, and they choose to
00:21:33.500 medicate, or they just take their lives.
00:21:37.140 So 30 people that I was in the industry with, that's their story.
00:21:41.640 Mostly women or? 1.00
00:21:43.300 Like 28 of those women. 1.00
00:21:46.320 Man.
00:21:49.000 And that's just people that I was close to.
00:21:51.880 The number is far greater, and it's not just overdose and suicide.
00:21:55.280 It's people putting themselves in situations where, you know, it's really, it's not, I
00:22:02.300 hate to say it, it's interesting, but it's insane to think about how many girls end up 0.99
00:22:07.020 in relationships where the abuse is great enough where they're murdered.
00:22:10.880 Because you put yourself in situations that you would never put yourself in because you
00:22:14.720 devalue yourself.
00:22:15.960 Right.
00:22:16.160 It's like, I deserve this because I'm, you know, whatever.
00:22:21.180 And you just live your life like that.
00:22:22.980 And even like all of my roommates that I had when I was in the industry, dead.
00:22:27.920 But it's because they lived their life in such a way where they didn't care if they lived.
00:22:32.640 You know, like one guy fell off a balcony.
00:22:35.380 He was drunk in Mexico and fell off a balcony.
00:22:37.660 Like, he would have never done that.
00:22:39.260 And what's so sad is when they release his obituary, it says his stage name and how many
00:22:46.180 porn movies he did and X, Y, and Z, and doesn't even talk about the man that he was.
00:22:51.600 Right.
00:22:52.120 That's your epitaph, right?
00:22:53.600 If that's what you're known for, that's your epitaph.
00:22:57.360 One of the big criticisms of the porn industry that you hear, especially from feminists, is 1.00
00:23:02.200 that it's dominated by these male producers who are taking all the money and they're being
00:23:06.580 financially and professionally abusive of the women to say nothing of the physical abuse.
00:23:12.000 But then the pro-porn people will say, okay, then the porn performers can just go on to
00:23:19.080 OnlyFans or presumably there are copycat websites out there where the performer has control over
00:23:26.860 the production and they're keeping more of the money or whatever.
00:23:31.160 And this has exploded, even though I think the vast majority of the women on OnlyFans don't
00:23:36.440 make any money really at all.
00:23:37.940 Yeah.
00:23:38.420 So it's, I mean, it's pretty sad.
00:23:40.840 So it's like, so what's happening across the board, especially any of the girls from
00:23:46.240 the porn industry or most of the girls that have any kind of notoriety, it's catfishing 1.00
00:23:50.600 2.0.
00:23:51.600 So what's happening is it's curated content.
00:23:55.180 So it's, you know, film, it's videos and photographs that were shot prior to.
00:24:00.460 And then you got, you know, Joe Blow sitting in a basement having a conversation with these
00:24:06.520 people because...
00:24:07.320 So on OnlyFans, you can chat.
00:24:09.160 Well, I guess not.
00:24:09.820 So you can, it seems like you're chatting with a person.
00:24:12.300 Well, here it is.
00:24:13.460 Every single time you message someone, you have to pay for that message.
00:24:18.600 Every time you get a video, you have to pay for that video.
00:24:21.680 So it's a subscription base.
00:24:23.420 So the subscription to that person might be a dollar or $20, but the money is made in
00:24:29.640 the DMs and on the DMs, you have to pay per message and you have to pay per video.
00:24:35.620 But the messaging and the pictures and the video, it's getting sent to you by a person
00:24:42.220 that's just pulling stock footage that already exists.
00:24:45.560 And you believe that you're having a conversation in real time with someone and you're paying
00:24:50.100 for every response and it's just someone sitting in a basement somewhere.
00:24:53.720 It's probably some dude.
00:24:54.820 Yes.
00:24:55.420 Oh man, that's awful.
00:24:57.480 That's why I'm saying it's catfishing 2.0.
00:24:59.120 Oh man, that is so, that makes a thing that, it would be sad and degrading even if it were
00:25:05.220 this porn actress. 1.00
00:25:06.440 Sure.
00:25:06.720 Personally, they're doing, but it is so much worse.
00:25:11.440 But then, if you're the guy and you're not going to meet this girl, you're not going
00:25:18.480 to marry this girl, you're not going to, if your only interaction is just these videos
00:25:24.240 and these messages, does it even matter?
00:25:27.860 Sure.
00:25:28.860 Does it?
00:25:29.320 I don't know.
00:25:29.820 You're just getting these messages.
00:25:30.920 Does it matter that it's some fat guy in a basement rather than some cute porn lady?
00:25:34.780 Well, because your emotions are real and you're forming an emotional connection with this person.
00:25:42.120 And you're telling your brain, your mind, your heart, it's okay with me buying intimacy.
00:25:54.840 So I'm going to believe that's A, okay, and B, I'm probably going to distance myself from
00:26:03.520 any opportunity of engaging in reality because there's an opportunity for me to be rejected.
00:26:08.100 There's, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of risk involved.
00:26:13.820 And so, but what if this becomes my expectations and nothing can meet my expectations because
00:26:19.200 my expectations are built on something that's not real?
00:26:22.840 Because they used to have the old phone sex lines.
00:26:25.320 Sure.
00:26:25.540 In the 90s, it was, you'd dial a 1-900 number.
00:26:28.320 Yeah, but you believe, even then, you believe you're talking to this sexy girl.
00:26:32.420 You're probably not.
00:26:33.360 Right.
00:26:33.980 You're probably not.
00:26:35.380 Right.
00:26:35.560 If you're working the hotlines, you're not working in front of the camera.
00:26:40.680 You're not some smoking hot girl sitting there at two in the morning on your phone.
00:26:45.060 You're just not.
00:26:45.820 Yeah.
00:26:46.800 Like, all of that stuff is built on creating a reality that's fictitious.
00:26:52.500 That's why it's scalable.
00:26:54.060 It's scalable because it's not real.
00:26:55.800 And the opportunity cost that you point out, you can't be messaging this illusion of this
00:27:05.520 hot chick who's really probably a fat dude every night and simultaneously be pursuing 1.00
00:27:11.060 a healthy romantic relationship that might lead to marriage.
00:27:13.460 You can't.
00:27:14.040 If you do one, you can't do the other.
00:27:15.940 But you're also disconnecting yourself from reality.
00:27:18.900 Yeah.
00:27:19.340 Because what happens, like compromise in any area of your life will lead to compromise
00:27:24.220 in every area of your life.
00:27:26.780 Right.
00:27:27.000 So it will impact your integrity.
00:27:28.660 Yeah.
00:27:28.760 It will impact, like, if I believe relationships are built on transaction, Michael, the moment
00:27:35.520 that you can't do something for me and you text me and you need to have a conversation
00:27:40.520 with me or you want me to help you move a couch, man, you haven't done anything for me
00:27:44.180 lately.
00:27:44.520 Why am I going to respond to you?
00:27:45.820 Why am I going to answer your phone call?
00:27:47.220 Right.
00:27:47.460 Because I have this transactionary mindset.
00:27:50.660 Right.
00:27:51.680 And that could bleed into your family.
00:27:53.720 Well, absolutely.
00:27:54.200 It could bleed into anything.
00:27:54.980 Well, I'm not going to value your relationship.
00:27:56.720 I'm not going to value quality time.
00:27:58.420 Yeah.
00:27:58.580 I'm not going to value, you know, a multitude of things because I'm disconnected from what's
00:28:03.900 real.
00:28:04.280 What about for the girls, though?
00:28:05.280 So I see how awful this is for the consumers.
00:28:08.140 Yeah.
00:28:08.340 And for everyone who's around the consumers.
00:28:11.320 Yeah.
00:28:11.500 But these girls. 1.00
00:28:12.540 Yeah.
00:28:12.660 So let's say there was one girl who made headlines because she sold her bath water and made like 0.99
00:28:17.200 a zillion dollars doing it or something.
00:28:18.700 Yeah.
00:28:18.820 So, okay, that's the headline you sell.
00:28:19.940 I made a bazillion dollars with some stupid thing on OnlyFans.
00:28:23.720 But then you look at the statistics.
00:28:25.320 The vast majority of these women are making nothing. 1.00
00:28:27.800 Yeah.
00:28:28.360 And you think of, again, talk about opportunity cost.
00:28:31.760 The moment that you put one picture of yourself up, the moment you present yourself as a porn
00:28:39.360 girl on the internet, that changes the trajectory of your life. 1.00
00:28:45.780 Well, also, you can't do something like that.
00:28:48.960 You can't compromise your dignity without a belief that knowing it's going to cost you
00:28:54.900 something.
00:28:55.560 Yeah.
00:28:56.080 Like, if I was looking at porn in a library or wherever, you know, in a coffee shop, whatever,
00:29:02.820 wherever, even if I was looking at something on Instagram that was slightly inappropriate,
00:29:06.920 if someone walks past me.
00:29:10.100 Yeah.
00:29:11.040 Of course.
00:29:11.780 Or, you know, I get rid of it.
00:29:13.660 Why?
00:29:13.940 But there's a deep level of shame and there's just something about sexuality, there's something
00:29:21.380 about that that is ingrained in you so deeply that you can't deny it.
00:29:26.600 Yeah.
00:29:27.060 And when you start to deny the things that are true that you cannot run from, it's going
00:29:32.700 to cost you more than you would ever want to pay.
00:29:36.180 And I know that person.
00:29:37.420 Right.
00:29:37.980 It's so evil.
00:29:39.520 It's just so powerfully evil.
00:29:41.560 And I know it's a fallen world and there's lots of evil to go around, but this seems
00:29:45.080 so particularly evil.
00:29:47.820 Oh, and...
00:29:48.100 Did you get a glimpse of what the top of the industry looks like?
00:29:52.620 Meaning, beyond the casting directors, beyond even the distributors or whatever, how conscious
00:30:00.600 are the people who run this of how...
00:30:03.860 They're not conscious of it.
00:30:05.000 I mean, how aware are they of how...
00:30:07.100 Yeah, I mean...
00:30:07.540 They're just not...
00:30:08.240 Well, they're aware of how much money they're making.
00:30:10.640 Yeah.
00:30:10.800 So you have MindGeek, that's the organization out of Canada that owns...
00:30:15.400 They've monopolized the porn industry and they do that...
00:30:19.060 That's the one that owns Pornhub?
00:30:20.500 Pornhub and many others.
00:30:21.820 Many, many others.
00:30:22.680 Okay.
00:30:23.200 Like, if it's something that someone could recall, they own it.
00:30:27.620 Wow.
00:30:28.980 And in addition to that, they own Traffic Junkie.
00:30:31.860 So Traffic Junkie is when you go to a porn site, it actually captures your information and
00:30:37.340 sells it to Facebook and Google.
00:30:38.540 So when you are on Facebook and you've been watching porn earlier that day or that night
00:30:44.560 before and you see that inappropriate thing pop up on your Facebook feed that's an advertisement,
00:30:48.560 it's not an accident, my friend.
00:30:50.140 Wow.
00:30:50.760 It's the very evidence that someone's been shelling your information.
00:30:54.480 So it's funny, because if fear of the just punishments of our Lord and God is not enough
00:31:02.520 to keep people from doing bad things, because people mess up and they do bad things all the
00:31:05.740 time, the unjust punishments of these website cookie trafficking companies, that might put
00:31:15.080 a little fear into people, too.
00:31:16.580 So the company, this type of company that exists, is owned by the porn distributor, the biggest porn
00:31:23.540 distributor.
00:31:23.720 Yeah, absolutely.
00:31:24.100 So Traffic Junkie is owned by MindGeek, which owns Pornhub and many other organizations.
00:31:28.700 But the scary thing is, so the porn industry just eclipsed $100 billion industry, $100 billion.
00:31:37.820 So if you take the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NBA and put all the revenue together,
00:31:43.060 it still doesn't eclipse how much money porn makes.
00:31:46.160 If you take how many people visit Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter on a daily basis, it doesn't
00:31:51.940 eclipse how many people are watching porn on a daily basis.
00:31:55.020 It's in the neighborhood of 30% to 35% of all the data transferred on the internet on
00:32:00.180 a daily basis is some type of pornography.
00:32:03.500 But you're telling me that the people who run this extremely rich, powerful industry,
00:32:08.220 who see the data, maybe they don't meet the performers, but they at least...
00:32:12.060 Oh, they absolutely.
00:32:13.180 They're completely detached from any human interaction.
00:32:16.940 Because the way that porn makes money, it's monetized through viewership, just the same
00:32:22.780 way, like YouTube's monetized, YouTube got that model from Pornhub. 1.00
00:32:28.020 Like all the major technological advancements that you see that are happening, they're taking
00:32:34.680 the model that came from porn.
00:32:37.160 I had an academic buddy of mine once told me that porn sets a lot of the technological
00:32:43.040 advancements of these products.
00:32:45.320 Sure.
00:32:45.440 Including when you're on YouTube and you skip ahead and a thumbnail pops up and it says,
00:32:49.780 here's the part of the video.
00:32:51.260 My friend was telling me, this comes from porn because people want, you know, they have
00:32:56.020 short attention spans and so they want to jump ahead.
00:32:58.200 So I guess that people say that to give credit to the porn industry.
00:33:03.500 They say, look, they're moving the technology forward.
00:33:05.600 And even so, the way that, like, you know, the way that you become monetized and make
00:33:11.520 money off of YouTube or any other social media is you get to the point where there's enough
00:33:16.440 viewership where you can run ads on your media.
00:33:19.340 Right.
00:33:20.020 That came from porn. 0.94
00:33:22.060 Wow.
00:33:22.400 The thing that's so hard for me to believe, though, is just that these people at the top,
00:33:27.220 maybe it's easy to believe, that the people at the top, they're just so divorced, they're
00:33:30.380 just looking at numbers on spreadsheets.
00:33:32.000 Sure.
00:33:32.160 They really don't see the human connection.
00:33:34.420 If I were running an industry and one of my top workers came out and said, hey, 30 of
00:33:42.520 my friends killed themselves in the last decade because of this industry, like, it would be
00:33:47.660 hard for me running the industry not to notice that, right?
00:33:52.040 But they do notice it.
00:33:53.400 You know what they do?
00:33:54.680 Someone takes their life.
00:33:56.220 So there was a specific example of this.
00:33:58.320 I won't use the name, but there was a girl that she didn't want to work with a specific 1.00
00:34:06.420 male performer.
00:34:07.600 This performer had done, like, some, like, homosexual porn.
00:34:12.240 Okay.
00:34:12.620 And she chose, like, I don't want to work with this person.
00:34:15.340 Yeah.
00:34:15.640 And then she was attacked on social media because she didn't want to work with this person.
00:34:21.420 For being homophobic.
00:34:22.880 Right.
00:34:23.580 And then, so now she's being attacked to the point where she ends up taking her own
00:34:28.800 life.
00:34:29.180 She hangs herself in a public park.
00:34:32.200 This happened, like, 2016, 2017.
00:34:34.880 And then, so what the industry does and has done, so this is their playbook, someone dies,
00:34:40.300 and then they make a best of film to honor her, but they monopolize off of this tragedy.
00:34:49.380 So not only do they see it, they make more money on it.
00:34:53.840 Right.
00:34:54.100 They figure out how to capitalize on it.
00:34:55.640 Sure.
00:34:57.080 But to them, it's just a product.
00:35:00.440 Well, people are products.
00:35:01.780 Yeah.
00:35:02.120 People are products and sex is transactional across the board.
00:35:05.180 That's why there's so much detachment.
00:35:07.520 Right.
00:35:07.720 And that's the danger for the consumer as well.
00:35:10.300 Say more about that.
00:35:13.100 Well, the danger for the consumer, so if I am watching pornography, I'm forming this
00:35:18.920 relationship with a screen in my hand, and I'm detaching myself from reality.
00:35:25.100 I'm becoming disconnected from what intimacy actually is.
00:35:29.440 I'm re-ingraining this neurological pattern where I can be selfish.
00:35:35.840 I'm not going to be rejected.
00:35:38.280 Sex is transactional.
00:35:39.880 It's about me, when I want it, and it just reintegrates this behavior in myself where
00:35:48.060 it's nothing like being in an actual relationship with a human being whatsoever.
00:35:53.400 Now, you as the performer, are you seeing this happen to you, that you're just not viewing
00:35:59.660 people as people, you're becoming dehumanized, or no?
00:36:04.160 I would say yes, but it first happens with you.
00:36:07.920 You detach yourself from reality because, number one, you're going by pseudonym.
00:36:11.140 You don't even go by your real name.
00:36:12.680 So it's interesting that the first thing that the director promised me is, I can make your
00:36:17.820 name famous, but the first thing that happened was my name actually died.
00:36:22.720 Because if I can detach you from any kind of belief in there's some kind of moral aspect
00:36:32.060 of this that I should or shouldn't be doing, if I'm calling myself by another name, then
00:36:38.920 it detaches you from it.
00:36:40.560 Because...
00:36:41.100 And it covers the shame.
00:36:42.320 You, Joshua Broom, have a mother.
00:36:44.660 You have a God.
00:36:46.620 You have an upbringing.
00:36:48.260 You have a moral sense.
00:36:50.200 Yeah.
00:36:50.520 At least some kind of moral sense that you...
00:36:52.300 But you, whatever your performer name is, well, that guy just, he just got invented five
00:36:57.780 minutes ago.
00:36:58.320 Right.
00:36:58.600 That guy didn't have anything.
00:36:59.700 Yeah.
00:36:59.980 It's like the Tropic Thunder.
00:37:01.660 It's like, I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude that doesn't even know what
00:37:05.800 dude he is.
00:37:06.860 You know, but it's true, though.
00:37:08.080 It's that you, because you have a stage name, and everyone around you calls my stage name.
00:37:13.620 And that, for me, that became real in that I had people in my life saying, hey, I love
00:37:21.500 you.
00:37:22.380 What are you doing?
00:37:24.080 Like, you could be doing other stuff.
00:37:26.900 Why are you doing this?
00:37:29.280 And then you hear that, and you're like, well, either I have to take into consideration what
00:37:34.160 they said, or I push them away.
00:37:37.300 And I pushed anyone that was speaking sensibly to me away, and I just surrounded myself with
00:37:44.500 a bunch of people who were patting me on my back on my way to hell.
00:37:47.960 Wow.
00:37:49.200 So, how long into the industry before you start to think, I've pushed away all these people
00:37:57.180 that I love, and I'm not happy, and I...
00:38:01.180 How long is that time period?
00:38:04.060 Yeah, so for me, I think, like, to revisit a question you asked earlier, you said, can
00:38:10.180 you make money in this industry?
00:38:11.840 For me, you know, someone who I grew up not having a father in my home yet, the father,
00:38:19.740 he was in the same town.
00:38:21.240 Grew up in a very small town in South Carolina, and the added dynamic was, I saw him.
00:38:26.400 I knew he was my father, but he was never a father in my home or in my life.
00:38:30.240 Did he acknowledge that you were his son?
00:38:31.940 Uh, yes, but that was it.
00:38:35.260 There was no, there was like a few attempts, and yeah, so there was a few attempts for him
00:38:41.500 to be part of my life in some capacity, but he ended up getting married, and then, you
00:38:46.620 know, you know, he was, they were both 16 at the time, and my mom chose to keep me, and
00:38:51.160 he chose to, you know, continue living his life.
00:38:54.320 And I would see him, and that made me feel, what's wrong with me?
00:38:59.500 Yeah.
00:39:00.120 Like, it was confusing at first, and then it made me angry, specifically because I saw
00:39:04.180 this man in this healthy dynamic.
00:39:06.480 Like, he, like, he was married, and they had kids, and they had a nice home, and, you know,
00:39:11.940 they had all these things, and it was just me and my mom struggling.
00:39:16.200 Wow.
00:39:16.800 Most people who grow up without a father, I mean, what do I know?
00:39:21.020 I just, I guess in my imagination of this, the father is on the other side of the world.
00:39:25.640 The father's just not there.
00:39:27.640 I imagine it's much, much harder if you see this guy, and you see his new family.
00:39:32.840 Yeah, I mean, there's definitely different aspects of fatherlessness, where it's like,
00:39:36.920 you know, someone in my case, or like, there's various, you know, traumas that come with levels
00:39:41.880 of fatherlessness, like divorce, or maybe a father that's in the home, but he's not present.
00:39:47.460 But there's, but yes, to your point, it was very frustrating that the thing that I felt like
00:39:52.320 I needed most, and the thing that I wanted most, was in arm's reach, but had no interest in me.
00:39:58.340 Were you aware of this at the time, or you were just angry, and you didn't know why?
00:40:02.160 Well, I was confused until I was angry, but I was always aware, you know, because he was there.
00:40:08.220 Right.
00:40:08.660 You know, so that caused, so me having a high achiever personality, it's like, well,
00:40:13.940 I can outwork my feeling of lack.
00:40:18.640 I can overcome my feeling of worthlessness, or my need to be valuable.
00:40:24.400 So through affirmation, it was, you know, first it was scholastics, then it was sports,
00:40:29.320 then it was getting the girl that no one else could get, then getting the most girls,
00:40:32.060 and so on and so on.
00:40:33.840 But being in that industry, that personality trait came with me, both me feeling inadequate
00:40:39.160 and me feeling like I need to prove myself.
00:40:42.720 So being someone who is somewhat analytical, I love statistics, and it's like, okay,
00:40:46.860 I'm tracking literally on a spreadsheet.
00:40:49.220 Once I make a million dollars, then I'll be happy.
00:40:53.560 I'll be fulfilled.
00:40:54.560 It's like, so I'm like tracking it like it's some kind of game.
00:40:57.380 I do it.
00:40:58.180 I make a million dollars.
00:40:59.400 And guess what?
00:40:59.940 It didn't work.
00:41:01.560 And then the same thing, like in the industry, I got nominated for performer of the year.
00:41:06.220 I got nominated three years in a row.
00:41:08.200 Didn't win, didn't win, didn't win.
00:41:09.860 Fourth year, I won it.
00:41:11.120 And I thought like that was like the Mount Rushmore of porn because it was this big award
00:41:15.680 show, and then it was not only the actors and the actresses, but the organizations, the
00:41:20.760 studios, like they voted on it.
00:41:22.540 So that meant like, you're the guy.
00:41:24.440 And I won.
00:41:25.760 And when I won, I thought that it would bring me this sense of relief, this feeling of lack,
00:41:31.720 this frustration, this pain.
00:41:33.160 I thought I would experience joy and fulfillment.
00:41:35.680 And I did for a second, but it didn't work.
00:41:39.040 It didn't last.
00:41:40.340 And that quickly amplified my anxiety, deepened my depression.
00:41:44.580 It took me to a place where decision after decision after decision led me to, okay, I'm
00:41:50.180 now making a plan to take my life.
00:41:53.860 So at that point, you are truly the dog who catches the car.
00:41:57.840 There is nowhere else for you to go.
00:42:00.000 You've made a lot of money.
00:42:01.700 You're the number one guy.
00:42:03.600 There is no achievement to get in this line of work.
00:42:08.400 Right.
00:42:09.760 I never got into video games, except for a little period of time.
00:42:15.060 Yeah.
00:42:15.220 When I was like five years old, I played Donkey Kong.
00:42:17.380 And then when I was a teenager, I got a kick out of Grand Theft Auto.
00:42:20.480 Oh, yeah.
00:42:20.820 Because it was so crazy.
00:42:21.880 It was so, you know, you just keep running people over and flying helicopters into buildings
00:42:26.440 and doing all this crazy stuff.
00:42:27.280 Yeah.
00:42:27.900 And I remember, though, playing the video game in this aimless way.
00:42:35.340 Not on the missions, just aimlessly shooting people or whatever, robbing things.
00:42:39.400 And after a certain point, I realized this was pointless, and I'd just go kill myself in
00:42:48.300 the game.
00:42:49.780 And I've thought back on that at some point over the years.
00:42:52.680 And I think there's something profound in that intuition, that if you're aimless, and you're just doing
00:43:03.260 things for pleasure, and then you reach what would appear to be the maximum amount of pleasure,
00:43:08.380 I've never considered ending my life.
00:43:12.920 Right.
00:43:13.140 But I think intellectually, I could see how someone could get to that place.
00:43:18.800 Yeah.
00:43:19.780 And you get to that place.
00:43:21.300 Yeah.
00:43:22.100 Yeah.
00:43:22.500 I literally got to a place where, so I, it's interesting.
00:43:26.840 So I just came from, I was doing a speaking engagement in Atlanta, and it was the first time
00:43:34.380 I've been back to Atlanta since the last time I left Atlanta.
00:43:37.320 The last time I left Atlanta was 11 years ago, and that's what I had done my last film.
00:43:41.760 You did a porn film in Atlanta.
00:43:44.560 In Atlanta.
00:43:45.100 Okay.
00:43:45.940 11 years ago.
00:43:47.700 And then I'm flying back to LAX, and in my head, I'm like making the decision, like,
00:43:53.560 okay, I'm going to take my life when I get home.
00:43:55.300 Go home.
00:43:56.440 I get enough, I do some research and say how much, you know, these pain medications would
00:44:02.540 I have to take to overdose.
00:44:03.600 I get it, I line them up on the counter, I'm like, okay, I can't swallow this many pills
00:44:09.380 at once, but so this, and then I've got this check in my pocket, and it's just like, it's
00:44:14.820 just driving me crazy.
00:44:16.060 It's this giant, like, cashier's check, and I just feel it in my pocket, and I'm wearing
00:44:20.240 slacks, and I just feel it against my skin, it's driving me crazy. 1.00
00:44:23.020 I'm not sure why I'm so aware of it.
00:44:24.880 And then I take it out, and I start thinking, like, well, if I'm going to do this, you know,
00:44:29.720 I assume my bank account will go to my mom or my brother or something like that, so I'll
00:44:36.280 go deposit this check, and then I'll come back and take care of this, and I walk into
00:44:40.700 this bank, and normally, I would just go to the Dropbox or the ATM because on the memo
00:44:46.940 of the check, it said what it was for.
00:44:49.100 Like, it would have the title of the movie, which was always grotesque, and I was humiliated.
00:44:53.740 I didn't want to look someone in the eye and say, hey, here's the check for me selling
00:44:56.860 myself for seconds, I didn't want to do that, but today, on this day, I didn't care.
00:45:02.380 I was like, whatever, I don't care, and I went through the line, you know, sign the check,
00:45:06.760 slide the check across the counter, normal transaction, and I pivot to walk away, and
00:45:12.940 she kind of stops me, and she says, excuse me, Joshua, are you okay?
00:45:20.680 Joshua, can I do something for you?
00:45:22.380 And what she didn't know is it had been over a year since I had heard my name.
00:45:28.760 I'd stopped answering my mom's text.
00:45:31.000 I'd gotten rid of, like, I've unfriended anyone that followed me on social media that
00:45:35.780 was, like, from my actual life, my fraternity brothers, my friends from high school, my brother.
00:45:42.640 I wasn't returning any texts.
00:45:44.060 I wasn't returning any calls.
00:45:45.240 The only person that existed was my stage name, which everyone on set called me.
00:45:52.120 Everyone knew me.
00:45:53.020 I was very well known.
00:45:54.240 So the gym that I went to, the barbershop that I went to, like, everywhere that I went,
00:45:57.980 that's all that I heard.
00:45:59.140 Joshua did not exist, but when she said my name, it stopped me in my tracks, and it wrecked
00:46:05.840 me because all of a sudden, I was faced with what was real because at that moment, I'd created
00:46:12.320 this plausible reality based on lies, guilt, and shame.
00:46:15.960 Up to and including if the stage name guy kills himself.
00:46:19.540 Well, who cares?
00:46:20.080 He's just, he's not real.
00:46:21.140 Yeah.
00:46:21.680 But if Joshua kills himself.
00:46:23.320 Yeah.
00:46:24.180 Joshua was a kid.
00:46:25.480 Joshua has a mom.
00:46:26.740 Yeah.
00:46:26.900 Joshua is pissed off at his dad.
00:46:28.840 Joshua has a brother.
00:46:30.580 Yeah.
00:46:31.220 So for me, like, what I felt immediately was guilt and regret from not letting my mom know
00:46:39.060 if I was okay.
00:46:40.080 Like, that was the last few text messages that she sent me.
00:46:42.240 She's like, you know, dang it, just tell me if you're okay or not.
00:46:47.080 Like, if you're not going to come home, if you're going to stay doing whatever you're
00:46:49.840 doing, whatever, I just want to know if you're okay.
00:46:52.820 And I was so selfish and so caught up in my shame and my pride that I couldn't even pick
00:47:00.740 up the phone or send a text to let my mom know that I was alive.
00:47:03.760 And in that moment, when I heard my name that my mom had given me, my reality was challenged
00:47:12.960 and I felt the pain that I was numb to.
00:47:15.000 So I ran home and I called my mom.
00:47:19.220 And then my mom said what she had been saying for, you know, I'd been in LA for eight, nine
00:47:25.040 years, something like that.
00:47:26.000 But I was in the industry for six.
00:47:27.880 And she said the same thing she had said.
00:47:30.140 I love you.
00:47:30.920 You're better than this.
00:47:33.580 Please come home.
00:47:35.480 So I did.
00:47:36.540 So that day, I called my agent.
00:47:39.620 I called my PR person.
00:47:41.380 Quit, I quit, I quit.
00:47:42.420 I'm out of here.
00:47:43.620 I even like found someone to sublease my place. 0.54
00:47:46.240 I'm like, I don't care.
00:47:47.460 You know, just pay rent.
00:47:48.920 You can literally have everything in my home, like all my furniture, everything.
00:47:53.960 I'm going to take some clothes.
00:47:55.060 And I'm out of here.
00:47:58.260 There's this odd paradox.
00:48:03.700 On the one hand, you're behaving in this extremely selfish way.
00:48:07.800 On the other hand, you've completely neglected yourself and denied the existence of yourself.
00:48:14.340 Yeah.
00:48:15.560 I say it's a paradox because I don't think it's exactly a contradiction or an impossibility.
00:48:21.800 In fact, very often, that would appear to be how these things go.
00:48:25.600 Killing yourself is both extremely selfish and a complete rejection of the self.
00:48:29.880 How is that?
00:48:32.660 Yeah.
00:48:33.620 It's an interesting thing to struggle with because on the outside, aesthetically, I was taking very good care of myself, but I was dying inside.
00:48:42.160 And I think that's why it's so much easier to put on a mask and pretend.
00:48:46.320 And, you know, for me, I just wanted the person in front of me to like me or to do the thing to get the affirmation.
00:48:52.440 I didn't care about anything else.
00:48:54.340 But I was disillusioned and disconnected from reality.
00:48:57.240 The power of the name is so striking because we think, oh, who cares about a name?
00:49:04.380 You can have a nickname.
00:49:05.160 You can change your name.
00:49:06.220 It's no big deal.
00:49:07.020 That's just words, words, words.
00:49:08.600 I call this a glass, but I could call this a parakeet.
00:49:13.240 It's just whatever it is.
00:49:15.840 But that isn't true.
00:49:17.460 Names do matter quite a lot.
00:49:19.400 The first charge given to Adam in the Garden of Eden is name everything.
00:49:23.820 All the way up to modern day, this big political fight that everybody seems to be in right now over transgenderism is basically a fight over names and the relationship between names and reality.
00:49:35.220 If you call me Johnny or you call me Mary Sue, if you call me Rachel Maddow, I'll probably laugh.
00:49:43.180 But if you say that to someone who is in the transgender movement, that person will lose it.
00:49:51.240 If you mispronoun or misgender, meaning use the correct pronouns for somebody, this is the worst crime you can possibly commit against them because they know the power of a name.
00:50:00.380 I mean, even the transgender transition is a kind of ritual suicide, right? 1.00
00:50:06.380 Where you say, okay, my old self, that's my dead name.
00:50:09.040 That's a dead person.
00:50:10.300 Forget that person.
00:50:11.480 I'm this new person.
00:50:13.060 It's hard not to see a parallel to what you're describing in the industry.
00:50:17.040 Sure, sure.
00:50:18.560 And I think in a deeper way, in any aspect, it's like it's an identity crisis.
00:50:24.740 If my identity is rooted in a belief around a feeling or a behavior and I identify myself based on that, I'm going to constantly be in this identity crisis because there's actually an author of life that's given me an identity that I don't get to choose who or what I am.
00:50:45.080 But I can feel a certain way, but my feelings can't define me because I've already been defined by an author.
00:50:55.320 I was talking to an exorcist on this show, actually, and we were talking about selling your soul to the devil.
00:51:04.400 And he said, well, you know, you can't actually do that.
00:51:06.360 Right.
00:51:06.780 I said, what do you mean you can't do that?
00:51:07.740 He says, you don't own your soul.
00:51:09.580 Yeah.
00:51:09.900 No, yours.
00:51:10.480 You didn't make your own life.
00:51:12.060 You didn't craft your soul.
00:51:13.600 And so you can't sell it.
00:51:14.860 The devil tricks you and makes you think you can sell it.
00:51:16.860 You actually can't sell it.
00:51:18.440 You can't totally define yourself.
00:51:21.960 We tried to do that a lot.
00:51:22.960 Sure.
00:51:23.120 But you can't.
00:51:24.420 You didn't choose how you came into this world.
00:51:26.540 You damn well sure shouldn't choose how you go out of the world.
00:51:30.100 Right.
00:51:30.600 And so you have obligations to other people.
00:51:32.260 And so this bank teller, providentially, calls out, says your name.
00:51:37.820 Yeah.
00:51:38.540 This hits you.
00:51:39.220 You call your actual mother, not your invented personas.
00:51:42.940 Right.
00:51:43.600 Yeah.
00:51:43.960 I call my mom.
00:51:44.760 And then I run home.
00:51:47.040 And then I spend two years just doing everything I can to cover up what I'd done.
00:51:53.360 I literally had tattoos, cover them up with new tattoos, shaved my head, deleted my social
00:51:59.420 media, did everything that I could to hide what I'd done.
00:52:03.540 Like very like Genesis 2, Genesis 3.
00:52:05.840 Right.
00:52:05.940 Like I'm running, I'm hiding, I don't want to be found.
00:52:10.220 And I get to a place where I just, I'm okay.
00:52:16.060 Like I look like I'm okay on the outside.
00:52:18.040 I start working at a gym.
00:52:19.200 And again, the personality trait is still there.
00:52:22.120 It's like what, like that's just who I am.
00:52:23.940 Like regardless of what I'm doing, if I'm eating wings, I'm going to eat the most or the
00:52:28.020 hottest.
00:52:28.660 Like I'm going to win.
00:52:29.460 I'm going to die to win no matter what.
00:52:31.300 It's just who I am.
00:52:32.280 So it's like, okay, if I'm going to be a personal trainer, I'm going to be the best dang personal
00:52:36.280 trainer there's ever been.
00:52:37.800 And I quickly worked my way up in this gym and, you know, worked my way into management
00:52:42.700 and I'm doing okay.
00:52:44.860 But at night, I'm not doing okay because the reality of what's on the internet and people
00:52:51.140 recognizing me and me just wanting to be a regular person was nearly impossible.
00:52:57.080 But I was almost in denial of that.
00:52:59.760 I consider myself a fairly meme-y guy.
00:53:03.680 Like I'm fairly internet-y.
00:53:05.440 I'm not very plugged into pop culture, but internet-y.
00:53:08.000 I have a large collection of memes.
00:53:10.560 And one of my producers, I will not say which one, embarrass this producer, said, are you
00:53:17.160 aware of this meme of Joshua?
00:53:19.480 And I said, I'm not.
00:53:20.960 And he said, it's this funny meme.
00:53:23.300 It's from a porn scene.
00:53:24.960 It became, it took on a life of its own.
00:53:28.100 And it's you, it's you in a bathtub and someone comes in and says, hey, you're at the beach
00:53:35.700 and you need a lifeguard or something.
00:53:36.760 You say, I'm not in a beach.
00:53:37.660 I'm in a bathroom or something.
00:53:38.900 Yeah.
00:53:39.240 Yeah.
00:53:39.460 So, so there, there was this meme and it's been shared probably, I think it's been shared
00:53:46.260 over a hundred million times.
00:53:47.540 It became really popular on me, on Vine.
00:53:50.700 And then it became really popular on TikTok.
00:53:52.500 But there's this scene where, this goes to the ridiculous of the writing that happens
00:53:58.500 in pornography.
00:53:59.620 But I'm in a bathtub and then a lifeguard runs in and she's like, get out. 1.00
00:54:06.660 There's a shark in the water.
00:54:08.940 And I was like, what are you talking about, lady?
00:54:12.140 Like, this is a beach.
00:54:13.220 It's not a, you know, this is a, this is not a beach.
00:54:15.480 It's a bathtub.
00:54:15.940 I'm in a bathroom.
00:54:15.960 A bathtub.
00:54:16.260 Yeah.
00:54:16.640 Yeah.
00:54:16.940 That's, so that's what I say.
00:54:17.920 I say, this is not a beach.
00:54:19.360 It's a bathtub.
00:54:20.980 And, but with a, with like, like straight face, you know?
00:54:25.240 You know, it's funny.
00:54:26.340 It is.
00:54:26.920 It is.
00:54:26.980 It's a very funny bit in that it's, maybe, maybe a lot of porn is like this, but that
00:54:32.520 strikes me as it's so self-aware about what it is.
00:54:35.260 There's no, there's no real pretense.
00:54:36.920 It's just like, ha ha, we're here.
00:54:38.260 Right.
00:54:38.840 Yeah.
00:54:39.360 I mean, she, like, she ran in with like the little like lifeguard thing and she's wearing 0.75
00:54:43.280 like, she's dressed in like, like Baywatch.
00:54:45.560 You know, she's got the red bathing suit on, you know, and she comes in, I'm just sitting
00:54:49.020 in the bathtub.
00:54:50.040 And that's, and that's the meme.
00:54:51.460 It's like, this isn't a beach, it's a bathtub.
00:54:53.900 Like, is the meme.
00:54:55.200 So if this went viral during the years of Vine, were you out of the industry at this point
00:55:00.620 or were you still in it?
00:55:01.720 Vine was like 2012-ish.
00:55:03.560 Yeah.
00:55:03.820 So I got out at, in 2012.
00:55:05.620 This is right around the time.
00:55:06.840 Yeah.
00:55:07.020 So it went, it went viral then.
00:55:08.440 And then it went, then people started like remaking it on YouTube and then it got popular on TikTok
00:55:14.040 as well.
00:55:14.740 And then I found out about TikTok and I was like, and I, so through finding out like how
00:55:21.120 like popular TikTok was being, I took, I took a peek at TikTok and I'm like, oh, this
00:55:25.200 is not for me.
00:55:26.000 You know, this is bad, this is bad news.
00:55:28.360 Yeah.
00:55:28.640 You think regular social media is bad?
00:55:30.740 Yeah.
00:55:31.100 TikTok is just crack because there's no home screen.
00:55:32.940 Right.
00:55:33.120 You're just always in some video with music.
00:55:35.120 And then, but then I, then I talked with someone and it was like, well, there's, um, there's
00:55:39.920 your, your for you page.
00:55:41.960 And then there's a page where just the people you follow.
00:55:45.240 So I was like, anyway, they're like, well, you know, they're showing me data.
00:55:50.620 It's like how many, you know, this is the most downloaded app, you know, in this age demographic
00:55:55.180 and so on.
00:55:56.200 And I started thinking like, well, okay.
00:55:58.400 You know, my objective is to reach people with the gospel.
00:56:02.440 So how could, how could I leverage this for that?
00:56:06.600 I'm like, let's, let's, let's think about this.
00:56:08.940 And then I started doing some research and then someone sent me like, Hey, have you seen
00:56:14.620 this meme or like something about the meme?
00:56:16.680 And I was like, I have no idea, you know, because it became popular like after I was out of the
00:56:21.300 industry.
00:56:21.540 So I have no idea about it.
00:56:23.820 And I, I did some research and I was like, man, like a hundred million views, like a hundred
00:56:29.000 million times this thing's been shared.
00:56:30.620 And it's like, as far as like popularity of memes, it was like top 20 of like, you know,
00:56:35.180 it was when one, at one point it was like one of the most popular memes that existed.
00:56:39.940 And, um, I was like, this is, this is ridiculous.
00:56:42.560 And then I made a tech talk around it and it was like, but it was like, uh, who I, who
00:56:49.100 I used to be and who I am today.
00:56:51.580 And it was, and it was just, and it was just like a back and forth of like, it was that picture
00:56:55.520 and then like me getting baptized and then like that, a picture of me in the industry and
00:57:00.680 then me getting married and a, and a picture of me in the industry.
00:57:04.080 Um, and then, you know, me like the, you know, or family.
00:57:08.980 Yeah.
00:57:09.580 And then, you know, it, it reached, you know, so, so I've been sharing like, not just with
00:57:14.280 the meme, but just like sharing my testimony.
00:57:17.240 And, uh, so just, I, I shared something along that lines, um, on Instagram, uh, at a month
00:57:23.560 ago and it reached 7 million people, but the organization that we put together.
00:57:29.280 So it's one thing to reach a lot of people.
00:57:31.440 So we, we've got an ecosystem where there's, you know, using AI, uh, there, there's, there's
00:57:37.040 key words that if you type, you'll get a message and that message routes you to an opportunity
00:57:43.340 to, you know, like biblical literacy or like talk to a person.
00:57:47.260 Or if you're struggling with pornography, there's, there's a website that we've created
00:57:51.340 that there's a 10 steps of how to be free from it.
00:57:54.380 And so it took that, it's great to reach millions of people, but we took that and, and, and
00:58:00.120 create a systemized way of connecting people, all those people to the next step, whether
00:58:06.620 it be like freedom from pornography or hearing the gospel or being connected to a church or
00:58:10.240 whatever.
00:58:11.540 What's it like to be recognized in porn?
00:58:14.720 I have a very moderate, slight public profile.
00:58:20.660 And so every now and again, someone will come up and say, Hey buddy, you know, loved your
00:58:24.840 commentary on something.
00:58:27.140 Or it's some lib who wants to throw an egg at me, but it's, it's always, people are open
00:58:33.100 if they see me.
00:58:35.000 Right.
00:58:35.260 But with porn, people don't want to admit that they're watching it.
00:58:39.500 So do they come up to you and, or when I was in the industry unapologetically, but what
00:58:44.580 I guess, I think you have to factor in the fact that like I was in Hollywood, I was living
00:58:51.460 in Hollywood or I was in Vegas.
00:58:53.260 Those are the places I was, I was at the most.
00:58:55.540 Right.
00:58:56.160 So pretty shame.
00:58:59.740 Unapologetically, people would come up and ask for autographs or to take pictures with
00:59:03.820 me.
00:59:04.300 Wow.
00:59:04.900 It was a very common occurrence.
00:59:06.940 It wasn't just, you know, someone across the room, like, looks away.
00:59:10.280 Well, that happens more often now than, not, not a ton, but like.
00:59:15.200 Wow.
00:59:15.880 Yeah.
00:59:16.760 But so you're, you are being recognized regularly, even now that you're back in your old town
00:59:22.200 with your mother.
00:59:22.760 Well, because from the outside looking in, like I'm months removed from being the most
00:59:28.060 famous person in the industry.
00:59:29.180 So in, in just the way that content comes out, you know, it's, it's not, it doesn't
00:59:34.180 come out, you know, I, I film a film.
00:59:35.960 Yeah.
00:59:36.200 I mean, there's stuff steadily coming out a year after I'm, I'm out of the industry.
00:59:39.800 So people are like, what are you, aren't you that guy?
00:59:42.500 Like, what, what are you doing here?
00:59:44.540 Why are you working in a gym?
00:59:46.080 Like, what are you, what are you doing in this?
00:59:47.340 What are you doing in North Carolina?
00:59:49.040 Like, what are you doing?
00:59:50.120 Wow.
00:59:50.380 Um, so it, it happened so often I would just lie until I got found out and then I
00:59:56.280 had done over a thousand films.
00:59:58.000 So I was one Google search away from, you know, everyone knowing everything I didn't
01:00:02.040 want them to know.
01:00:02.820 Right.
01:00:03.500 Um, so.
01:00:04.280 Did they connect your real name with your stage name?
01:00:06.680 Was that a common thing?
01:00:07.800 Well, it was like on, on IMDB it was, it was connected.
01:00:11.360 Okay.
01:00:11.580 Um, so it, and like, unfortunately, like all the things that I had done that I was proud
01:00:17.180 of were on there, but it got buried.
01:00:19.440 Yeah.
01:00:20.160 That's enough that I didn't.
01:00:20.900 An avalanche of porn.
01:00:22.200 Yeah.
01:00:23.100 Um, but yeah, so people would find, you know, I would, I would lie until I got found out and
01:00:28.960 then I would just deal with it.
01:00:30.420 Um, hurt a lot of people, um, almost got fired from different things.
01:00:35.580 Um, people didn't want me to personal train them.
01:00:38.620 Um, but I just continued chipping away.
01:00:40.800 And then it just kind of became normal.
01:00:42.960 It was like, okay, I'm, I'm this trainer that's operating at a high capacity.
01:00:46.880 I'm a decent leader in the gym.
01:00:49.360 Um, so there's this stuff about them, but you know, whatever.
01:00:54.260 And it just becomes kind of normal.
01:00:56.060 And then there's this girl that starts coming to the gym, super gorgeous. 1.00
01:01:00.360 And I asked her out on a date and she says, no, which I was like, what the heck?
01:01:04.720 Excuse me?
01:01:05.340 Yeah.
01:01:05.720 I'm a good looking guy.
01:01:06.560 Personal trainer.
01:01:07.600 Yeah.
01:01:07.900 Yeah.
01:01:08.120 Got a million bucks.
01:01:09.040 Yeah.
01:01:09.260 Um, but.
01:01:10.800 She says no.
01:01:12.180 And, um, but then she's like, well, uh, we, we can go on a run if you want.
01:01:17.920 And I'm like, all right, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll run with you.
01:01:21.640 You know, I don't really love like doing long runs as you want to run like a 5k.
01:01:26.460 And I'm like, but for you, yes, a hundred percent.
01:01:29.220 I will run.
01:01:29.960 And I go there to meet her and I'm waiting on her to get there.
01:01:33.700 And I almost feel like my mom's voice in my head saying, don't you dare lie to her.
01:01:41.440 Don't you hurt her.
01:01:42.760 Yeah.
01:01:42.980 Because I'd hurt girl after girl after girl after girl after girl.
01:01:45.680 How so?
01:01:46.240 Just by being there.
01:01:46.780 Well, just I would, I would, I would not tell them about my past.
01:01:49.540 And they didn't know.
01:01:50.080 All of a sudden, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:01:51.900 Um, and it was, you know, sometimes, you know, withholding the truth is just as painful as
01:01:56.040 not telling the truth at all.
01:01:58.320 Um, so, but for her, I'm waiting and like, I'm feeling like, don't you lie to her.
01:02:04.560 And she gets there and we, we never made it to a run.
01:02:07.780 We continued walking and I just look at her.
01:02:09.720 I'm like, Hey, I want to tell you something.
01:02:12.620 I did a little bit of porn.
01:02:13.840 She was like, excuse me.
01:02:16.300 Come again.
01:02:17.460 Can you say that one more time?
01:02:18.780 And then I was just like, tell the whole truth, you know, just like man up, tell the
01:02:24.320 truth.
01:02:24.980 And then like, you know, like blacked out like five minutes, just like, you know, did
01:02:28.960 all this stuff.
01:02:29.680 And, you know, when I was, you know, just literally any bad thing that I could recall, just like
01:02:34.000 spitting it out.
01:02:34.840 And then she's like pretty shocked.
01:02:37.440 And then after a moment of obviously processing this insanity.
01:02:42.420 Ends with like, I stole a chocolate bar when I was eight years old.
01:02:45.640 I was like, I kicked my brother in the shin and I said it was someone else.
01:02:48.780 But she looks at me and she says, well, here's the deal.
01:02:53.280 The worst thing you've ever done doesn't define you.
01:02:57.720 And the greatest thing you'll ever do, that doesn't define you either.
01:03:02.340 You don't get to define yourself.
01:03:04.840 God defines you.
01:03:06.340 Do you know who God is?
01:03:08.040 And for me, I was used to putting on, I call it the first date mask.
01:03:12.480 I don't know who I am, but I'm going to become whoever you want me to be.
01:03:16.880 So I started regurgitating whatever I knew, like cosmological argument, like, yes, like
01:03:21.200 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:03:22.360 And she asked me deeper questions that were simplistic, but very foreign to me.
01:03:30.080 You know, are you plugged into a community anywhere?
01:03:32.280 Are you attending church regularly?
01:03:33.840 What's your relationship with Jesus like?
01:03:35.500 And I was like, whatever you're talking about, I don't think I got that.
01:03:42.040 And she said, well, I've been a Christian since I was in seventh grade.
01:03:46.360 My family's Christian.
01:03:48.180 I'm not perfect by any means, but my relationship with Jesus is the foundation in which I live
01:03:53.000 my life.
01:03:54.400 So what kind of food do you like?
01:03:56.500 I was like, what?
01:03:58.760 I just told you the truth and you didn't reject me?
01:04:01.360 I've been lying to people my whole life because I thought if anyone knew anything about me,
01:04:06.560 the person that his own father rejected, why would you want to know integral details about
01:04:14.160 me?
01:04:15.580 And she was like, yeah, well, you know, what are some of your hopes, dreams?
01:04:18.280 Like, what do you want to accomplish?
01:04:20.180 I didn't have any answers.
01:04:21.820 I didn't have the capacity to dream.
01:04:25.040 Right.
01:04:25.140 And we just walk and talk.
01:04:26.520 And then the next weekend, so this was actually Easter, eight years ago.
01:04:34.840 And then-
01:04:35.820 This was Easter you went on the walk?
01:04:37.540 Oh, man.
01:04:39.000 You know, sometimes symbolism's a little on the nose.
01:04:42.980 Yeah, yeah.
01:04:43.500 And then the next week, she invites me to church.
01:04:47.740 And I go and I'm sitting in this church and when I walk in, there's this wooden signage
01:04:57.600 and it says, we want to help people.
01:05:00.600 We want to love people where they are and encourage them to grow in their relationship with Jesus
01:05:05.240 Christ.
01:05:06.420 I was like, sounds good, but if you knew anything about me, no way.
01:05:13.140 And then this pastor gets up and it's this guy that reminds me of my grandfather.
01:05:19.220 And for me, the little bit of church that I experienced was very Southern Baptist, but not in no way good,
01:05:30.600 where all I remembered was if you had a wrinkle in your shirt or a tattoo on your arm, you're going to hell.
01:05:35.280 Yeah, that is the unforgivable sin, the wrinkle in your shirt.
01:05:38.000 Yeah, I mean, that's what I remembered.
01:05:39.980 And yet this guy gets up here and he's dressed somewhat casually.
01:05:45.740 And then he starts talking about this dynamic between Jonathan and David.
01:05:49.820 And when David died, he's talking about how historically the previous kingdom was completely wiped out
01:05:56.440 because they didn't want the previous kingdom to think they had any access to the new kingdom.
01:06:01.460 And David was different.
01:06:02.820 He actually asked, hey, is there anyone left out of Jonathan's lineage and Mephibosheth was still alive.
01:06:08.300 And Mephibosheth knew history, so he was expecting death.
01:06:13.380 And instead, David brought him into his kingdom and restored his land.
01:06:18.720 And then he keeps talking and talks about, well, Romans 3.23 says that we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
01:06:25.880 So who's guilty of sin?
01:06:27.380 Everyone.
01:06:27.780 And then Romans 6.23 says the wage of sin is death.
01:06:32.380 So each and every person, because of their sin, they're separated from a holy and perfect God.
01:06:37.040 There's a bridge that you need to get to God that you don't have access to because you're imperfect.
01:06:42.120 And he goes on to talk about how Jesus, fully God and fully man, came into this world and lived a life that we could never live.
01:06:48.540 He bridged the gap.
01:06:49.900 Died on the cross, paid for all sin for all time.
01:06:52.040 And it's through faith in him that changes everything.
01:06:57.020 And for me, what it did was it contended with how I saw myself and how I saw God.
01:07:05.660 Because I was like, there's no way that I could have access to God because I'm not good.
01:07:10.960 And then wrestling with no one is good.
01:07:13.080 It's an amazing feeling.
01:07:16.560 Catholics have sacramental confession where we go in and we confess our sins to Christ and the priest is acting in persona Christi.
01:07:25.280 And some weeks are worse than others.
01:07:30.020 Some weeks are a little lighter than others.
01:07:31.660 But what's amazing is even understanding all of that, even understanding that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God,
01:07:38.560 even growing in sanctity, even growing in virtue, which can and does happen.
01:07:44.920 When you're standing in line to confess your sins, it's that same feeling you're describing.
01:07:49.380 Like, well, no, that thing that I did, that's a bridge too far.
01:07:52.740 There's no way.
01:07:53.700 And then you go and you confess your sins and the priest says, okay, you know,
01:07:56.680 Ego te absolvo.
01:07:57.880 You know, okay, say three Hail Marys, get out of here, see you in a couple of weeks.
01:08:01.600 And you can know it intellectually, but you can still, you still feel that somehow.
01:08:08.800 There's no, oh, that thing that I did, there's no way.
01:08:10.800 Yeah.
01:08:11.720 So for me in that moment, I surrendered and submitted to the fact that I could not fix myself.
01:08:21.120 And there was a God that loved me so much that he sent his son into this world to suffer and die so that he could bridge the gap that I could never bridge.
01:08:29.620 And something happened in my heart.
01:08:31.640 For me, I surrendered my life and I let go of the burden that I'd been carrying.
01:08:37.620 And the relationship with the father that I always desired, I realized I had through Christ.
01:08:46.420 And so that happened that week after.
01:08:51.140 And so two things happened.
01:08:53.320 And so number one, this girl, her name's Hope, and she's been, you know, her name's Hope, and she's been my wife for seven years.
01:09:03.580 Oh, man.
01:09:04.500 And we've got three kids.
01:09:06.540 And the other thing that happened was amazing.
01:09:09.180 So I hear this, and then I go into this church, and I'm like, hey, can I share this with someone?
01:09:15.180 So I sit down with a pastor, and I share with him my story, and then he connects me to another pastor.
01:09:20.480 And this pastor, he's like, okay, I want to get a Bible in your hand.
01:09:24.440 Here's how you read the Bible.
01:09:25.740 Here's, you know, just a little bit of observation, interpretation, application.
01:09:29.180 Like, here's how you read the Bible in proper context.
01:09:31.760 And I just fall in love with the Bible.
01:09:34.900 And I just can't get enough of it.
01:09:36.000 And I actually start asking off of work.
01:09:37.780 And I'm like giving away, you know, personal training clients, and I'm spending 15 to 20 hours a week with this man at this church, and he's discipling me.
01:09:45.600 And I just fall in love with the Bible to the point where I end up going to Bible college.
01:09:49.760 I go to Liberty and, you know, study Christian ministries and focus on biblical theology.
01:09:53.640 And in the process, I start sharing my testimony.
01:09:58.080 And I feel like, okay, in the early stages, I'm not preaching.
01:10:03.300 I'm just sharing my testimony.
01:10:04.340 But as I'm up there, it's like I felt this need to perform.
01:10:09.900 You know, it's like for me, like I was a theater guy before I was, you know, the porn guy.
01:10:13.620 And it was like for me, you know, I needed to emote emotion.
01:10:17.200 I needed to, you know, I wanted people to cry.
01:10:18.660 I wanted people to laugh.
01:10:19.520 You know, I wanted to create this experience for someone based on what I was, you know, portraying.
01:10:25.680 And I wrote something.
01:10:27.820 You know, I took my story and made it, you know, something that I wanted to present.
01:10:32.680 And I get up there and I just feel this anxiety.
01:10:38.880 And for me, you don't live the life that I've lived.
01:10:43.020 Yeah, you're pretty comfortable in your own life.
01:10:45.440 Right, yeah, yeah.
01:10:46.800 I mean, just like there's nothing that I'm ever going to do where I'm like, you know, there's cameras, there's lights, there's a stage, there's X amount of people, whatever.
01:10:53.160 But for me, it's like I love those situations, actually.
01:10:57.900 But in this moment, I felt so much anxiety.
01:11:01.100 I couldn't put my finger on it.
01:11:02.880 And I felt this like, man, I've got to do a good job.
01:11:06.160 I've got to do a good job so that I will be liked.
01:11:09.860 And I'd reverted back to that mindset where, like, I had to prove myself.
01:11:13.460 I was still the kid that his father didn't want because sometimes you'll carry, you know, this, I forget the surgery, but that there's, you know, if you have this cataract and you have it removed, if you have it for a long time, even if it's removed and you completely see through the lens that your mind can trick you into believing that it's still, your vision is still cloudy, even though it's not.
01:11:41.200 So I'd been walking with this emotional limp for so long that even though I had been freed from it, I'd practiced walking with it so much.
01:11:50.420 Yeah, it's muscle memory.
01:11:51.760 Sure, right?
01:11:52.240 Yeah.
01:11:52.900 And I step up to the, I stepped from the stage.
01:11:56.500 I was like from backstage to the podium.
01:11:58.620 But when I stepped onto the podium, I just felt this like overwhelming sense where not audibly, but like I heard in my mind, in my spirit, I love you.
01:12:11.200 Son, I love you.
01:12:14.200 And I was like, okay, I don't need to perform.
01:12:18.080 And I essentially, I took what I wrote, I turned it over and I spent five minutes sharing my testimony.
01:12:25.480 And I spent the rest of the time trying my best to walk people through what Romans have to say, what the book of Romans has to say about salvation.
01:12:33.460 You know, this is why in the traditional liturgy, it's chanted.
01:12:39.780 Yeah.
01:12:39.940 One of the reasons for the chant, people think it's to be really theatrical, smells and bells, you know, the traditional Latin mess. 0.97
01:12:46.700 It's not, it's really the opposite.
01:12:49.460 Because when the gospel is chanted, the preacher takes his personality out of it.
01:12:55.820 And it's just the word.
01:12:57.220 Yeah.
01:12:57.400 He's pronouncing it in this way that is quite beautiful.
01:13:01.180 But it's without the, you know, and here's the moment when I'm going to really put a lot of gusto into it.
01:13:06.380 I had a priest in New York, a very good friend of mine, who said that some of these priests and preachers who make it a big show and a performance, they tell jokes like ham actors in a dying vaudeville play.
01:13:19.560 Yeah.
01:13:19.880 And what they ought to do is limit their repertoire to the jokes that St. John told the Blessed Mother while her son bled on the cross.
01:13:26.360 Yeah.
01:13:27.000 It's a very intense way of saying it.
01:13:28.500 Yeah.
01:13:28.920 But I think it's a good message.
01:13:30.100 Yeah.
01:13:30.420 You're talking about the son of God, God himself, the second person of the Trinity, comes down, takes on flesh, dwells among us, suffers in his passion, is crucified to redeem mankind.
01:13:44.880 It's not there for you to go do a soft shoe and shuffle off to Buffalo.
01:13:48.080 Right.
01:13:48.680 A hundred percent.
01:13:49.540 And you feel this ease the moment that you actually get up there.
01:13:53.320 You say, oh, I don't need to, I can take the tap shoes off.
01:13:55.520 Yeah, I mean, a hundred percent.
01:13:56.640 I mean, I think there's much to be taken from and learned from Catholicism in regards to Protestant, like, practice, where, like, the liturgy is beautiful and the history, like, history, like, church history is beautiful.
01:14:08.580 And I think removing yourself from that takes away from what it actually is.
01:14:14.040 Well, I love that just even your experience of it, I'm glad that it didn't affect your testimony, ultimately.
01:14:20.440 But even that feeling of your muscle memory, you know, in modernity, we think of virtue and vice as just, oh, I did this thing, but it doesn't matter.
01:14:32.280 So, okay, I look at porn every single night, and I go further and further into these kinds of fantasies, but that's not going to affect my real life.
01:14:39.780 That's just a thing that I do at night.
01:14:41.840 But we're creatures of habit.
01:14:43.820 Vice and virtue are habits.
01:14:45.380 So if you just do something all the time.
01:14:47.940 Yeah, well, just neurologically, the data says much different.
01:14:52.040 You know, it's like, I love, there's a lot of data around just, like, your brain, your heart, and the way that you interact in the world.
01:15:00.560 And so, like, for example, a few days ago on social media, I just posted, like, a 60-second clip of me saying, is masturbation sin?
01:15:10.340 Yes, and here's what masturbation is, and here's what 1 Corinthians says about love.
01:15:17.040 Compare and contrast the two and tell me where it lines up, you know?
01:15:21.080 And it goes viral because, you know, some people are agreeing, but most people are disagreeing.
01:15:25.520 And what happens is, is when you're confronted with conviction, you don't like that, you know?
01:15:33.840 And I think as someone who's a believer, there's a distinct difference between condemnation and conviction.
01:15:40.100 Conviction is a healthy thing.
01:15:41.280 It comes from the Holy Spirit.
01:15:42.640 Condemnation doesn't exist for the believer.
01:15:44.320 Romans 8, 1 says, therefore, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
01:15:48.260 So wrestling with those two things, but I don't have to necessarily surrender to my conviction.
01:15:54.540 And if I separate myself from that conviction because I'm disconnected neurologically because I've done this thing enough where I've justified it, now it's not that big of a deal.
01:16:05.380 Right.
01:16:05.560 And now I no longer feel convicted by it.
01:16:07.720 Because does anybody seriously believe it's not a sin?
01:16:11.720 I know plenty of people are going to say, oh, it's not a sin, it's fine, it's healthy.
01:16:16.380 I don't know, you've got the New York Health Department saying it's good for you to, you know, do what Woody Allen euphemistically called sex with someone you love.
01:16:22.720 Right.
01:16:22.960 But does it, nobody, Norm MacDonald had a whole bit on this.
01:16:27.460 Yeah.
01:16:28.060 Where he was doing a show, I think in San Francisco.
01:16:30.560 And Norm gets up and goes, yeah, sex is a filthy, shameful, disgusting thing that's obviously only meant for procreation.
01:16:35.520 And the audience is shocked by this.
01:16:37.040 He goes, oh, no, you know how, like, you're going to have a one-night stand or you're going to do it.
01:16:40.140 What's the first thing you do?
01:16:41.080 You close the blinds.
01:16:43.600 Yeah.
01:16:43.740 This is not the kind of thing you're doing for everybody to see.
01:16:45.860 Right.
01:16:46.020 So just any, or people just are kidding themselves, right?
01:16:48.480 Yeah.
01:16:48.660 Oh, for sure.
01:16:49.260 I mean, it's just the reality that you're forming a relationship with a screen in your hand.
01:16:55.440 So not only is it, it integrates selfishness, it dissipates your ability to execute self-control, you're becoming a poor lover.
01:17:07.340 Like, you're training yourself to finish quickly.
01:17:11.060 Hmm.
01:17:11.260 Like, it's contradictory to anything that is applicable to love or being a good spouse.
01:17:18.640 Right.
01:17:18.960 There's no positive thing about it unless you're saying, well, I just want to give in to my desires, give in to my flesh.
01:17:27.320 Well, Romans 12.1 says that we're a living sacrifice.
01:17:30.600 And we're to be, and then Romans 12.2 goes on to talk about we're not to be conformed by the world, but rather we're to be transformed by renewing of our mind.
01:17:38.440 We're to go through this metamorphosis so that we can know what the perfect will of God is, so we can appear in contrast.
01:17:46.160 Right.
01:17:46.540 So if I can't understand what is reality and what is me giving into my flesh, if that becomes blurry, then sure, I'm going to try to justify it.
01:17:58.040 Well, that's the traditional understanding of two wills, right?
01:18:02.540 You know, the things I want to do, I don't do, and things I don't want to do.
01:18:04.720 Yeah, Romans 7.
01:18:05.540 Yeah.
01:18:05.820 So the rational will is supposed to mediate between the perfect will of God and your fleshy, bodily, appetitive will.
01:18:14.020 Yeah.
01:18:14.640 And this was, you didn't need a PhD in philosophy to understand this for most of history.
01:18:19.300 Now, nobody seems to know anything.
01:18:21.260 But that was understood.
01:18:22.600 Because my feelings are my identity.
01:18:24.360 Right.
01:18:24.720 Yeah, exactly.
01:18:25.880 It's what's propagated.
01:18:27.160 Yes.
01:18:27.460 And so, since we're talking about religion, when you say that looking at porn and doing what people do when they look at porn is giving yourself a relationship with your hand and Pamela Henderson or something and a screen, as my college buddy, I don't think he coined it, but I did laugh when he mentioned that line, and a screen, though, is it darker than just the screen?
01:18:51.760 Is it more spiritual than just the screen?
01:18:53.480 Oh, absolutely.
01:18:53.940 Is it just demons?
01:18:55.320 Or is it a liturgical act of worship to demons?
01:18:59.340 Well, I mean—
01:18:59.980 To put it really bluntly.
01:19:00.700 Well, if your objective when it comes to sex is to—as a believer, if your objective is to be between a man and a wife and that to be a representation of Christ and his church, like, what place does that have?
01:19:16.660 And John 10, 10, 10, 10 talks about how the enemy wants to kill, steal, and destroy, well, if I can steal the way that you see intimacy, I can cause you to create an idol.
01:19:28.840 And all of a sudden, this thing becomes an idol, and I'm disillusioned into the fact to believe that this is something I need.
01:19:35.780 And it's a real addiction, like, neurologically, like, you will form an addiction, something that you do over and over again that gives you a—you know, this dopamine hits your brain.
01:19:44.480 It makes you feel good.
01:19:46.340 Those—yeah, it makes you feel good, but you're forming this artificial relationship with this fictitious reality.
01:19:52.940 Right.
01:19:53.780 I guess my question, though, is, is it—it's a fictitious reality in that these performers are not really the characters that they portray, not really their stage names.
01:20:02.700 But I wonder, in a deeper sense, is it a real thing?
01:20:08.820 Are you forming an intimate relationship with the principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places?
01:20:15.600 Yes, absolutely.
01:20:17.000 Well, I mean, that's what the enemy tried to do to Jesus.
01:20:20.460 If I can get you to compromise your identity, I can get you to compromise further.
01:20:26.060 It's like, you know, even in the garden, did God really say that?
01:20:31.820 Did he really say that?
01:20:33.400 Right.
01:20:33.880 Do you know, providentially, just today, I mentioned something about Genesis on my daily show, and someone wrote in and said,
01:20:41.880 well, Michael, the quote you said, that's not the first thing that the serpent says in the garden.
01:20:46.140 Actually, the first thing is this question.
01:20:49.320 Hold on a second.
01:20:50.280 Yeah.
01:20:50.820 Did God really say—did he really mean you were going to die?
01:20:54.260 Yeah.
01:20:54.800 It's not quite that.
01:20:56.100 Yeah.
01:20:56.260 So to question that identity, and then even now, you see all these headlines about the sex worker rights,
01:21:05.980 and especially all of the sexual revolution, LGBT stuff. 0.94
01:21:10.320 We're heading into the month of June, which is now one of the 12 months of the year dedicated to the rainbow.
01:21:15.840 I think it's pretty soon they're going to invent a 13th month to be another gay pride month. 0.98
01:21:19.800 So we're heading into June, and you're seeing all these corporations begin to really push this stuff.
01:21:25.000 And I can't help but notice one of the guys, I think it's actually a girl who identifies as a guy, who designed the pride clothing.
01:21:34.220 Pride, the queen of all vices.
01:21:35.640 Yeah.
01:21:35.880 Pride, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.
01:21:37.660 Yeah.
01:21:37.840 Well, and in addition to that, they used a rainbow, which is a symbolism of God's promise to not destroy the world.
01:21:47.160 Right.
01:21:47.440 One of the holiest symbols ever.
01:21:49.020 Yeah.
01:21:49.300 Now perverted.
01:21:49.680 Well, yeah, like one of the first covenants.
01:21:51.800 Right.
01:21:52.040 And a symbol given to us by God.
01:21:55.380 But one of the people who designed the clothing for Target is an overt Satanist.
01:21:59.080 And I can't help but notice whenever I see these viral clips go around of some pro-sex work person or some pro-only fans person or some shill for the porn industry will come out, there's very often demonic, devilish imagery that goes along with that.
01:22:16.160 Horns and tails and pitchforks.
01:22:17.740 Well, yeah.
01:22:18.080 Las Vegas is Sin City.
01:22:19.280 It's just, how come it's always these same images and these same symbols, all of which have been considered demonic and occult for thousands of years?
01:22:29.700 Yeah, even further down, and the goat as well.
01:22:34.100 The goat, yeah.
01:22:35.160 So the goat, like the, so I saw this on the Target clothing.
01:22:38.840 Yeah.
01:22:40.060 There was a guy who, he had goat horns on his head.
01:22:43.620 Yeah.
01:22:43.800 And then he had a goat thing on, head on his shirt, which was some satanic thing. 0.74
01:22:49.380 Right.
01:22:49.660 And you see it in the depiction of demon, like Baphomet or somebody.
01:22:53.180 Yeah.
01:22:53.880 Does that feature into porn or no?
01:22:56.420 I mean, I would just point it.
01:22:57.700 Yeah, I know.
01:22:58.320 The first, like the deep symbolism that points directly to evil, but to your point, yes, it is a direct correlation of evil, but where, you know, where God is absent, there is only evil.
01:23:13.140 Yeah.
01:23:13.360 So I would say yes, like to your point, it's like, it's a direct window into evil, into demons, into all these things.
01:23:21.460 Um, and that's why it's so dark and it leads to death and to, to the person advocating for the porn industry saying, well, how else could this person, you know, provide for their family?
01:23:34.280 They had to do that.
01:23:35.220 This is their right.
01:23:36.460 It's like, who in their right mind wants to be a prostitute? 0.73
01:23:42.100 Yeah.
01:23:42.580 Like no, no one wants that.
01:23:43.960 Yeah.
01:23:45.040 It's, it's just a lie.
01:23:46.560 Like, but, but no, no one wants that.
01:23:49.240 You, you don't wake up or you don't go to bed at night.
01:23:52.420 You lay down your head on a pillow and you think, I'm so proud of myself because I'm selling myself for sex.
01:23:58.280 Yeah.
01:23:58.520 You don't do that.
01:23:59.380 It's contradictory to the way that you're wired.
01:24:03.280 It transcends belief.
01:24:05.540 Yeah.
01:24:06.100 But, but often when you push people on this, you say, well, I have to be a stripper or I have to be a prostitute or I have to be in porn or something like that.
01:24:14.880 You say, well, why can't you work in the service industry?
01:24:18.360 I've worked plenty of service industry jobs.
01:24:20.400 But I would go even further than that.
01:24:22.700 Well, here's what I would challenge.
01:24:23.940 There's something that happened to you that made you believe that you could not pursue the thing that you're passionate about.
01:24:31.260 And because you can't pursue the thing you're passionate about because the trauma, whether it happened to you or you did it, you now define yourself through the lens of that trauma.
01:24:40.900 And you see yourself as incapable of doing the thing that you want to do.
01:24:45.040 So there's nothing left for you to do but to compromise.
01:24:49.000 But, but isn't there, I mean.
01:24:50.360 Because compromise is easy.
01:24:51.760 Right.
01:24:52.040 But I just mean, since we all encounter the service industry throughout the day, you go get a coffee, you get a hamburger or something.
01:24:58.060 And you think, okay, many, if not most of us, have worked these jobs at some point.
01:25:03.400 They're not the most technically difficult jobs.
01:25:05.380 Pulling a good shot of espresso actually is kind of difficult.
01:25:07.700 But, but still, you can learn how to do it.
01:25:09.820 But very often what people will say is, well, but they can't make it as much money.
01:25:14.620 You can make more money per hour.
01:25:17.020 Oh, yeah.
01:25:17.480 You can sell crack also.
01:25:18.640 Yeah, that's what I think, like, well, okay, you can make a, you can make a decent enough living, though.
01:25:22.820 Like, come on.
01:25:23.320 Like a, you can smuggle, you know, weapons or whatever.
01:25:26.000 Yeah.
01:25:26.240 You know, there's, there's a variety of things that you could do that you shouldn't do that you could make money.
01:25:32.060 Right.
01:25:32.480 But just because you could doesn't mean you should.
01:25:34.300 Right, right.
01:25:34.940 I just, I could see all of those temptations, especially for people.
01:25:38.340 It's just so chilling to hear what that agent asked you.
01:25:40.660 The first thing, hey, tell me about your childhood.
01:25:43.060 Yeah.
01:25:43.380 Yeah, it's twisted.
01:25:44.120 Oh, broken home, perfect.
01:25:45.840 No, absolutely.
01:25:46.540 You're looking for someone who you can manipulate based on the way that they see themselves.
01:25:51.160 Because if you don't have a foundation to stand on, you're going to, you're going to be with the wind.
01:25:57.000 Yeah.
01:25:57.420 Or you're going to go into whatever way that sounds good.
01:26:00.800 Because you don't know who you are and you're looking to the world to conform you.
01:26:04.120 So how do we fix it?
01:26:06.520 I know it's a fallen world.
01:26:07.700 People really ought to focus first on their relationship with God.
01:26:11.900 Yeah.
01:26:12.220 And they ought to, you know, work on sanctification and virtue and all the rest of that.
01:26:17.300 Yeah.
01:26:17.700 That doesn't let the politics off the hook.
01:26:19.960 We live in public.
01:26:22.060 Yeah.
01:26:22.200 We prosecuted pornographers for porn.
01:26:25.140 Yeah.
01:26:25.540 For obscenity very recently during the Bush administration, Bush number two.
01:26:29.700 Yeah.
01:26:29.900 There were pornographers who were sent to prison for, just not for child porn, not for other, just for smut.
01:26:38.120 Yeah.
01:26:38.960 Can we just do that?
01:26:40.320 Why is it that an eight-year-old can log on to any of these porn sites and watch whatever they want?
01:26:46.160 Yeah.
01:26:46.380 So I had the opportunity to speak at Capitol Hill and we're advocating for the Earning Act.
01:26:50.660 So the Earning Act has three different pieces.
01:26:54.760 The most important piece would be creating a solidified way of verifying one's identity through a government-issued ID.
01:27:05.300 Okay.
01:27:05.720 So actually, Louisiana and two other states, Utah and I forget the third, have implemented this legislation even though it hasn't passed yet.
01:27:14.340 So you have to be 18.
01:27:17.600 And what's crazy is like right now in other places, you can just go to a site and make up a birthday or just click, are you 18?
01:27:26.560 Sure.
01:27:27.560 And it bypasses that.
01:27:29.080 I used to do that on tobacco websites for cigars.
01:27:31.700 January 1st, 1902.
01:27:33.880 Okay.
01:27:34.040 That's my birthday.
01:27:34.940 Yeah.
01:27:35.180 There's no barrier.
01:27:36.080 So advocating for that, incredibly helpful.
01:27:41.000 And just making people aware of how it's impacting people.
01:27:44.760 Average age of exposure, 11 years old.
01:27:47.360 Wow.
01:27:48.080 84% of people who see porn under the age of 15 for the first time, it's incidental exposure.
01:27:55.180 Someone's looking for something on, you know, they're doing a biology project.
01:27:59.420 They scroll down one too many times and all of a sudden they see something that's pornographic.
01:28:04.980 If there's no barrier, if there's no, you know, if you don't have some kind of safety controls on your smart device, it's so easily accessible.
01:28:15.400 Yeah.
01:28:15.680 Because back in the day, for me, you know, it's like if you stayed up too late, like Skinamax and HBO After Dark, you know,
01:28:23.160 but because of streaming and because of cell phones, it's so easily accessible that you don't have to look for it.
01:28:29.540 It's going to find you.
01:28:30.440 Right.
01:28:30.840 Right.
01:28:31.240 And to your point, it's become so normative and then like OnlyFans and so on and so on.
01:28:36.700 It's become so normative that it's so prevalent that it's just out there for everyone.
01:28:43.180 And it's like when something becomes the norm, it's like, well, that might be bad, but it's just the way it is.
01:28:48.700 People are going to see it.
01:28:49.580 I also think even, I mean, we're talking about hardcore pornography industry preying on people.
01:28:55.920 Yeah.
01:28:56.080 But I was just back in Los Angeles.
01:28:59.840 You drive down Sunset Boulevard and look at just regular billboards.
01:29:03.520 Yeah.
01:29:04.280 Pretty risque.
01:29:05.240 Or you go on Instagram.
01:29:07.400 Yeah.
01:29:07.780 And just regular content, like of people you know.
01:29:11.940 Yeah.
01:29:12.180 Maybe because I worked in LA for a bit.
01:29:14.160 Some of my old pals from out there are a little more risque to begin with.
01:29:17.060 But that kind of content, the content in advertising, it's all kind of shades of gray.
01:29:26.020 Well, yeah.
01:29:26.420 Well, if you look at the laws around advertisement, they're from 10, 15 years ago where porn wasn't so prevalent.
01:29:34.800 But to advertise on Twitter, the age of consent is 13.
01:29:39.220 So you can advertise whatever you want to 13 and up, but no one foresaw the fact that people will be advertising pornography.
01:29:48.300 But that industry, to my point, $100 billion industry.
01:29:53.100 Yeah.
01:29:53.280 So there's that much money at stake, so you're asking me to change that legislation when it's making that much money?
01:30:01.680 Right.
01:30:01.920 It's like even knowing it's contributing to rape culture, it's contributing to sex trafficking, it's contributing to – it's insane.
01:30:10.740 So there's this person, her name's Heidi Olson.
01:30:13.860 She's a critical care nurse in Kansas City, Missouri.
01:30:16.500 50-plus cases per year of a sibling raping their – you know, a little boy raping a little girl or a little boy raping his brother.
01:30:30.680 Multiple cases.
01:30:32.660 This is happening in Kansas City, Missouri 100% of the time that kid watched so much porn that he went and did that.
01:30:40.860 Did the – I assume this is a spike in these numbers.
01:30:45.360 Like, I assume this is not a normal thing that nurses have been observing for – 0.70
01:30:50.120 Unfortunately, she sees it so much that that's all she does.
01:30:53.980 Man.
01:30:55.560 So that's – you know, I had the opportunity to partner with NACOSI, so the National Coalition Opposing Sexual Exploitation and Exodus Cry.
01:31:03.780 And we were at Capitol Hill advocating for that legislation.
01:31:07.840 We sat down with different, you know, state representatives, and there was a woman there, and she was sharing her story where she was dating someone, and then they went to Vegas.
01:31:18.560 And while they're in Vegas, this person actually drugs her, and he rapes her and films it.
01:31:24.700 And then he has a few friends come, and they rape her, and they all film it, and he puts this on Pornhub.
01:31:30.720 And it stays on Pornhub for two years.
01:31:33.120 It becomes very popular.
01:31:34.340 It becomes monetized.
01:31:35.500 Eventually, the person's identified, it's taken down, he gets arrested and charged.
01:31:42.240 Yet, the images still exist on Google, and Google says there's no clear – you know, there's no clarity regarding this person.
01:31:52.660 Consenters.
01:31:53.260 Yeah, there's no consent.
01:31:54.260 There's no clear, like, you know, around the whole consent thing.
01:31:58.800 There's no clear sign of this person being objectified or raped or anything like that.
01:32:05.300 So they left the imagery up, even with that case.
01:32:12.240 Even if the guy gets arrested.
01:32:13.700 Right.
01:32:14.860 So that's the reality that we live in.
01:32:17.440 I wonder, too, I mean, this is a good framing of the issue, because it'll probably resonate more.
01:32:24.040 You say, well, obviously, it's about sexual crimes and breaking laws that are already on the books.
01:32:30.560 But isn't there also an argument that if 90% of men are looking at this stuff, or have looked at it at some point, it's probably much higher than that.
01:32:41.180 Yeah.
01:32:41.280 And this is a regular problem that is constantly degrading people's views of themselves, views of other people.
01:32:48.580 You're communing with demons, let's just call it what it is.
01:32:53.300 How do you have a good country if 100% of men, or thereabouts, and a large number of women, are perpetually in a state of mortal sin? 1.00
01:33:05.500 Yeah.
01:33:05.920 Isn't that a problem for the political community to try to work on? 0.89
01:33:09.500 Absolutely.
01:33:10.580 Absolutely.
01:33:10.980 And I think that what you're wrestling with is a tremendous amount of money.
01:33:17.100 Of money and power.
01:33:18.200 And power.
01:33:19.180 Yeah.
01:33:19.660 And then also this false belief that I should be able to do whatever I feel like.
01:33:25.720 Yeah.
01:33:26.300 Right.
01:33:26.820 And then you have-
01:33:27.880 That's freedom.
01:33:28.680 Yeah.
01:33:28.920 Freedom.
01:33:29.260 Porn is freedom, isn't it?
01:33:30.920 What's crazy, from a Christian perspective, liberty is actually the choice to be able to say no to the things I
01:33:40.280 I ought not do.
01:33:41.280 You're right.
01:33:41.880 Even when I want to do them.
01:33:43.220 Right.
01:33:43.700 Even when I don't want to do them.
01:33:45.460 Right.
01:33:46.100 You know, it's like Galatians 5, 22 and 23, it talks about the last thing, fruits of the Spirit, self-control.
01:33:52.040 Yeah.
01:33:52.220 Like self-control is evidence of the Holy Spirit.
01:33:56.160 That was the idea of liberal education and the liberal arts was to discipline yourself to be able to control your base appetites and desires for a higher freedom.
01:34:06.920 Right.
01:34:07.120 Because the freedom to shoot heroin or something, that's not freedom.
01:34:10.880 Yeah.
01:34:10.960 No one really thinks that's freedom.
01:34:12.220 Same goes for porns.
01:34:13.480 Yeah.
01:34:13.940 You know, if you told John Adams and George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, hey, the freedom thing, it's working out really great.
01:34:21.160 Yeah.
01:34:21.300 Here in 2023, guys, you can look at as much weirdo porn as you want.
01:34:28.040 And as young as 13, I think they would say, you know what, this country, forget about it.
01:34:36.520 Let's forget about it.
01:34:37.560 We made a mistake.
01:34:38.480 Let's go back.
01:34:39.420 That's obviously not what they thought freedom was.
01:34:41.840 Yeah.
01:34:42.660 A hundred percent.
01:34:43.900 Yeah.
01:34:44.080 I mean, to even paint it like a darker picture, it's like you, there was a Netflix documentary that I was watching like a year or two ago.
01:34:53.360 And this person, he was wrongly persecuted and he was in prison.
01:34:57.540 And now he had a show where he was traveling and just this is what this prison looks like.
01:35:02.960 This is what the experience is.
01:35:05.080 This is, you know, the geographical location, so on and so on.
01:35:08.200 And he was in this one prison and he found out that 84% of the guys there, this is a different country, but 84% of the guys there, they had been convicted of rape.
01:35:21.120 And it's like, that's an astronomical amount.
01:35:23.620 So he, you know, asked, you know, like 50 people or so, like, you know, how did this happen?
01:35:29.060 Why did this happen?
01:35:30.060 And he kept getting the same answer.
01:35:31.420 In their culture, men were more important than women and sex was something that a man was owed.
01:35:39.060 Pornography, it portrays the same thing, that you should be able to walk into a room and just have sex with someone.
01:35:47.460 And then also, you know, in the 80th percentile, like all pornography has some level of violence in it.
01:35:53.240 So now you're digesting something you're developing an appetite for, you develop an appetite for something that is not only opposite of what you were designed to desire, it's actually contrary to what's reality.
01:36:08.880 But if you get this appetite for it, you're going to feel insatiable until you partake.
01:36:15.280 This is something that, it's amazing how people have forgotten what taste and desire are and what they're like.
01:36:24.940 No child starts out with a hankering for scotch.
01:36:29.080 No 10-year-old says, I can really go for a scotch today.
01:36:31.740 Scotch is an acquired taste.
01:36:33.720 Oysters are an acquired taste.
01:36:35.920 Caviar, I don't know, whatever.
01:36:37.340 These things are acquired tastes.
01:36:39.360 Tobacco, probably.
01:36:40.640 But then you acquire them and then you desire them.
01:36:43.120 And then sometimes, once you acquire the taste for scotch, you desire rum or tequila or something.
01:36:51.660 Did you see an interview with Andy Wachowski, who's one of the guys behind the Matrix movies, and he and his brother both became trans at a certain point.
01:37:00.580 Kind of odd.
01:37:01.120 The guys who created the Matrix about this disconnect between reality and the virtual reality.
01:37:06.180 Wow.
01:37:06.480 These guys both become trans.
01:37:07.840 And Andy Wachowski, one of the brothers, gives an interview and he says, oh yeah, porn was what led me to my transgender identity.
01:37:16.340 I watched a bunch of porn and then I started identifying as trans.
01:37:21.080 And there are many such cases.
01:37:22.800 Well, Ted Bundy.
01:37:24.020 Ted Bundy was super into porn, right?
01:37:25.660 Yeah, very into porn.
01:37:27.020 And he actually said porn was the thing that led him to this thing and this thing and this thing.
01:37:31.000 And then, I mean, that's just the way it is.
01:37:32.640 Like you, you know, at one point in my life, I could drink one Bud Light and get a buzz.
01:37:38.700 You know, and then, you know, you need more to...
01:37:41.860 And you need crack.
01:37:42.740 You need crystal meth or something.
01:37:44.200 Yeah, like you go on this trajectory where I need more of this thing to get this feeling that I had.
01:37:50.040 Well, I think of probably a caricature of what risque material was like in the 19th century, which is, you know, a woman in a big frilly dress.
01:37:58.580 She says, oh, I'm going to show a little bit of my ankle or something.
01:38:02.020 And, but obviously the way that these baser appetites work, you're never satisfied.
01:38:07.060 So when you say, okay, increasingly porn is violent and people are consuming more violent porn, obviously this is cultivating certain tastes and desires.
01:38:17.640 And so if an eight-year-old or whatever, a 10-year-old gets hooked on to porn, it's not that he's going to immediately start looking at weird transsexual billy goat porn. 0.84
01:38:27.700 But it's going to be that he looks more...
01:38:30.800 Yeah, he's going to look at a naked lady. 1.00
01:38:32.340 It's like he's going to look at a Playboy or something.
01:38:34.900 And then it's going to be this harder thing and this harder thing.
01:38:37.360 And then it gets pretty dark pretty quick just judging by the statistics.
01:38:42.400 Yeah, I mean, well, even like psychologically, you see, I think it was in the 80s, there was someone who won a Nobel Prize around this research.
01:38:50.980 His last name was Tinbergen.
01:38:52.820 And he did this research around supernormal stimulus.
01:38:55.760 And he studied a level of, so he studied this butterfly.
01:39:02.140 And there was this species of butterfly where he created a female butterfly.
01:39:06.760 And Buddy made brighter, better, 3D, and put this butterfly into space.
01:39:13.680 And the male butterflies tried to mate with this butterfly.
01:39:17.220 And obviously it didn't work.
01:39:18.800 But then the byproduct of that was they started ignoring the female butterflies.
01:39:23.500 And then they started fighting among each other.
01:39:26.040 And then they started dying out.
01:39:27.980 And it's a really, you know, it's a great correlation to what porn is.
01:39:31.320 Because if you're desiring something that's a fictitious reality, you're going to become insatiable for it.
01:39:38.560 And you're seeing men, you know, struggling with erectile dysfunction.
01:39:43.500 You're seeing people, you know, being unfaithful to their spouse.
01:39:46.920 You're seeing all these things because there's a disconnect from what is real in contrast to what is fake.
01:39:52.240 Like the movie Inception, you know, there's this fight in this elevator scene.
01:39:56.280 It's one of my favorite movies.
01:39:57.160 And you don't see that and you think, man, they just have, you know, one day they must have just, you know, gotten that elevator and threw that together.
01:40:06.220 No, there was choreography.
01:40:07.780 There was CGI.
01:40:08.580 There was editing.
01:40:09.700 There was all this stuff that went into there.
01:40:11.420 There were actors.
01:40:12.200 There were paid to be there.
01:40:12.980 There was a director.
01:40:14.780 Like pornography is the same thing.
01:40:16.120 You're creating a fantasy that doesn't exist that's creating the experience.
01:40:21.180 But if you believe that experience to be true and then you develop a desire or a taste for it and you go to seek it out and you can't find it, you're going to end up doing things that you never thought you would do.
01:40:35.940 Because it's even, not just the surreality of the porn film.
01:40:44.460 Sure.
01:40:45.040 It's the surreality of the consumer.
01:40:49.120 Yeah.
01:40:49.440 Where you say, as you're describing, well, no, that's just compartmentalized over here.
01:40:55.220 That thing that I'm doing, you know, on my computer, on my phone, that's not really me.
01:40:59.300 Right.
01:40:59.460 That's just like a thing.
01:41:00.820 That's a different guy.
01:41:01.860 Yeah.
01:41:02.380 He probably has a different name.
01:41:03.900 Yeah.
01:41:04.020 But we're human beings.
01:41:05.840 We're integrated beings.
01:41:07.360 So obviously you can't just compartmentalize that.
01:41:10.480 Yeah.
01:41:10.760 And so that is going to affect your marriage.
01:41:13.960 That's going to affect your relationships.
01:41:15.360 It's going to affect your desires and even the moral reality.
01:41:19.960 Okay, only Joshua is morally culpable.
01:41:24.260 Right.
01:41:24.620 But stage name guy.
01:41:26.380 Yeah.
01:41:26.960 There's no consequences.
01:41:27.840 It's not real life.
01:41:28.920 Yeah.
01:41:29.000 And I think even more so that you're seeing these people develop, you know, these appetites
01:41:34.360 watching pornography and they end up with someone, you know, they get married.
01:41:39.540 Number one, believing the lie that if I get married, my porn addiction will go away.
01:41:43.540 It doesn't.
01:41:44.340 And now I have these appetites for these things that I've developed, you know, a desire for.
01:41:52.120 Yeah.
01:41:52.360 And maybe my wife isn't fulfilling them. 0.99
01:41:54.580 And now I'm going to bring these presuppositions about what sex is supposed to be into my marriage
01:41:59.600 bed and then if they don't meet my desire, I'm going to continue watching porn or I'm going
01:42:04.740 to go outside of the marriage because I believe I need this thing to be satisfied where God
01:42:11.500 never intended marriage to be about sex.
01:42:15.180 It's a great part of marriage, but marriage in itself is not only about sex.
01:42:21.640 Right.
01:42:22.140 And it's certainly not about sterile sex.
01:42:24.340 Sure.
01:42:24.540 But it's like, well, because it's, it's, it's, again, it's like, it's idolatry.
01:42:29.100 If I make sex God, I'm going to do any, any and everything in my power to submit and surrender
01:42:35.460 to the God of sex.
01:42:36.620 Right, right.
01:42:37.060 But even the idea that porn is without consequence, you know, what people view sex as without
01:42:42.140 consequence, but of course marriage traditionally understood is intended for the good of the
01:42:47.400 spouses and for the sake of the generation and education of children.
01:42:50.820 Yeah.
01:42:50.940 That it's a real love, a love that is so real that it actually becomes enfleshed in this real
01:42:57.300 new person.
01:42:58.740 Yeah.
01:42:59.040 Who, and hopefully many new people who, you know, are a result of that love.
01:43:02.840 Yeah.
01:43:04.440 We divorce all of that, even our popular culture.
01:43:06.780 Yeah.
01:43:06.980 We live in a very contraceptive culture. 0.80
01:43:08.640 Yeah.
01:43:08.920 Well, yes.
01:43:09.860 Well, and also it's just, there's, there's a, there's a huge difference between love and
01:43:14.220 lust. 0.98
01:43:14.920 Yeah.
01:43:15.460 Like they're so different.
01:43:16.580 They're not similar.
01:43:17.520 They're polar opposites.
01:43:18.460 Yeah.
01:43:18.640 One's selfish, one's selfless.
01:43:21.420 Yes.
01:43:22.100 You know, one's very sacrificial and one costs you something and one's easy and it's,
01:43:27.320 and you, you're, you're compromised.
01:43:28.800 Right.
01:43:29.340 And one's about me, one's about self-control, one's about giving into myself.
01:43:33.560 Right.
01:43:33.860 I mean, the, one of the traditional definitions of love is that love is to will the good of
01:43:38.860 the other person for their own sake.
01:43:41.620 Yeah.
01:43:42.260 Not for, and so obviously that's the opposite, but I just, I was talking with a friend of
01:43:48.560 mine.
01:43:49.600 I think there was some headline about how in Japan people want to look at porn more than
01:43:53.560 they want to date or have sex.
01:43:55.440 Yeah.
01:43:55.700 And my friend said, that's insane.
01:43:58.400 Could you imagine you got, you got an opportunity to sleep with a woman or to look at porn?
01:44:02.480 Could you imagine someone choosing porn?
01:44:04.640 Yeah.
01:44:04.820 I said, I totally can understand that.
01:44:07.020 Well, yeah.
01:44:07.480 You, I mean, speaking of that culture, you go into a place where you don't even have to
01:44:11.800 interact with a human person to get food.
01:44:14.100 I mean, we're living in a culture where people don't want to pick up a phone and call somebody.
01:44:18.380 It's only text or we want to talk to a screen.
01:44:20.820 We don't want any, people have so much social anxiety.
01:44:24.360 I said, in that culture?
01:44:25.440 Yeah, of course.
01:44:26.940 The, the porn is, requires no effort, is never going to judge you.
01:44:31.940 There's no, there's no rejection.
01:44:33.640 There's no rejection.
01:44:34.960 And the porn can be whatever stuff you type in.
01:44:37.840 You're going to have like three furries and an alien and I don't know, whatever.
01:44:41.280 Man.
01:44:41.860 Gosh.
01:44:42.200 Like speaking of that, so I, I was speaking of furries, I was, I was at a conference.
01:44:48.080 Yeah.
01:44:48.340 So it's called Think Media and it's a Christian conference and it bring in different speakers
01:44:52.800 about different topics.
01:44:53.680 And the objective is for you to be able to think critically about, you know, things that
01:44:59.100 are going on in culture and be able to speak into them as Christian leaders.
01:45:02.880 And there was this person just talking about the, just the insane stuff going on inside
01:45:08.120 of schools.
01:45:09.020 Yeah.
01:45:09.160 And I, I, I did not know this, but in Washington state, there is multiple schools that have
01:45:18.080 rooms with kitty litter in them for people who identify as furries to urinate. 0.97
01:45:25.900 This can't be real.
01:45:26.680 This is real.
01:45:27.260 I, this can't, I refuse to believe that this is real.
01:45:30.980 This is real.
01:45:33.040 So there's, there's, there's tax dollars have gone to building rooms that have kitty litter
01:45:39.380 in them.
01:45:40.280 There's litter boxes that, you know, adolescents go into and urinate in, and the teachers will
01:45:47.340 get penalized.
01:45:49.080 You know, they'll, they'll, you know, their, their jobs are on the line for them to communicate
01:45:53.560 with them based on who, how they identify.
01:45:57.040 Though I prefer to just reject the possibility that this could even be real.
01:46:03.420 In another sense, I, I feel better about that than I do about some guy going into the girl's
01:46:08.740 room.
01:46:09.220 If a guy thinks he's a cat and he wants to go to a litter box.
01:46:11.980 Yeah.
01:46:13.040 At least he's not invading a woman's private space. 0.99
01:46:15.480 You know, it's not exactly, uh, ordered living, probably not conducive to human flourishing.
01:46:20.260 Right.
01:46:20.760 Well, like even like more detrimental than that, there's legislation in Washington state
01:46:26.180 trying to be passed where 13 and up, you could say, I want to change my gender. 0.98
01:46:32.920 And then they, then, you know, they, they, they contact government authority and without
01:46:39.960 any consent or knowledge of the parents, they save the child and then they mutilate them
01:46:45.920 or provide them with whatever procedure or medication using tax dollars to do so.
01:46:51.740 And the parents have no say so about the matter.
01:46:55.100 I saw a headline in the Associated Press, which has become very left-wing, used to, used to
01:46:59.820 pretend to at least be down the middle.
01:47:01.020 Now it's a very left-wing activist news outlet.
01:47:03.880 And the headline said something to the effect of, Washington state protects trans kids from
01:47:10.580 parents.
01:47:12.360 So I thought, who's doing the protecting?
01:47:15.800 And what does that protection look like?
01:47:20.300 Yeah.
01:47:20.460 That's pretty dark.
01:47:21.580 It's, I mean, for me, it's just incredibly sad to, to be at a place, you know, I'm a father
01:47:27.300 of, of three very young boys.
01:47:30.120 So four, three, and one.
01:47:32.060 And, um, how can that be?
01:47:37.780 How, in what place do we get where adults are allowing kids to tell them they feel some
01:47:46.640 sort of way that's been propagated to them, what, like through a person or, you know, an
01:47:52.700 organization or whatever, where have they heard it?
01:47:54.640 Because this is not a thought that enters someone's mind normally.
01:48:01.040 How do we get to a point where we're allowing kids at 13 years old that can't vote, can't 0.99
01:48:07.400 see a rated R movie, um, can't, you know, do, like numerous things decide they can make
01:48:15.120 a decision that's going to change their life.
01:48:17.080 Well, so the answer, how do we get to that point, is in part because of perpetual ubiquitous
01:48:21.260 degrading sin.
01:48:22.320 Yeah.
01:48:22.480 So then, having come full circle, and you've come out of it, and more than full circle,
01:48:28.100 and you're in a much better place now, do you ever have contact with the people from
01:48:33.720 the porn industry, from your old life?
01:48:35.480 Do you ever reach back out to them?
01:48:37.040 Do you ever say like, hey guys, this is a better option?
01:48:41.040 Yeah.
01:48:41.220 Um, so for me, uh, so I got to the place that I got to in life through, you know, number
01:48:48.480 one, you know, having a relationship with God, um, developing, uh, uh, an understanding
01:48:55.660 of the Bible and allowing it to conform my life in contrast to the world conforming, uh,
01:49:02.780 me, or my feelings, or my past, or my feelings, and as I go on that journey, I, I go to counseling
01:49:07.940 as well.
01:49:08.900 And, um, and part of that was I had to kind of dismantle and destroy everything that I
01:49:14.960 thought to be true.
01:49:15.940 Yeah.
01:49:16.140 And at early on, like me becoming, you know, a Christian, I was like, I'm going to save
01:49:21.960 the world, you know?
01:49:23.160 And so I would, I reached back out to those people and I started, you know, interacting
01:49:27.800 with them on social media and like talking with them.
01:49:30.940 And what I found was I still had a lot of trauma that I was carrying and it was actually
01:49:37.480 unhealthy for me to, to see the things they were posting.
01:49:41.380 And, and, you know, even though I was able to acknowledge that this is not something that
01:49:45.340 I would ever want to be part of again, or, and, and then it, you know, it was bad, um,
01:49:50.260 but it was impacting me negatively.
01:49:52.380 So I had to distance myself from them.
01:49:54.940 But to your point, I, I, I didn't continue reaching out, but what they saw and many people
01:50:02.180 have saw is I wanted to take my life because I thought, um, I would never be a father.
01:50:12.440 I would never get married.
01:50:13.960 I thought like, sure, I could convince a girl to marry me, like sure, I could get a 1.00
01:50:16.840 girl pregnant, but I would never have the capacity to be a father.
01:50:20.820 I would never have the capacity to be a husband.
01:50:22.940 I think most guys, no matter how well adjusted you are, you think that's a lot of responsibility.
01:50:28.020 But I, I think pretty much every man who has become a father says that, especially someone
01:50:33.100 who's got this fairly colorful and traumatic past is going to feel that especially.
01:50:38.320 Yeah. And then in, in, in addition to that, I thought, okay, for me, if, if I'm not leading
01:50:44.140 something or being creative, it's like detrimental to me emotionally.
01:50:48.760 Like I need to be able to be creative in a way that impacts people.
01:50:53.240 And I thought, well, there's no way that I'll be able to do that.
01:50:56.900 Like there, no one's hiring me for like any kind of acting job that's legitimate.
01:51:02.580 Um, I'm not doing any kind of modeling, probably just not healthy for me to do.
01:51:06.280 So what organization is going to take me seriously?
01:51:08.940 Like, who am I going to contribute to in any capacity?
01:51:11.300 Like all, so I, I wanted to take my life because I thought there's things like any, anything
01:51:17.100 that I long for regarding a future, I didn't think were possible.
01:51:20.820 So for me, uh, you know, I, I lead a very healthy organization.
01:51:27.180 Uh, I, I do itinerant work, you know, I'm, I'm about to plan a church.
01:51:30.920 I've written a book.
01:51:32.020 I have a healthy family.
01:51:34.200 Um, I, I love my kids.
01:51:36.240 I lead my family.
01:51:37.240 Well, I'm doing everything I thought that wasn't possible.
01:51:40.760 So when people see, like, it's, it's not about my success or the fact that, you know,
01:51:46.220 I have this influence or whatever, like that's whatever.
01:51:49.680 I'm living this healthy life and I'm full of joy because I have these things in my life
01:51:55.860 that I didn't think possible.
01:51:57.380 And you're, there's no, you're, you're prudent in that.
01:52:00.260 I read a book, a staple of spiritual combat called the spiritual combat by Don Lorenzo Scupoli.
01:52:07.560 It's like 500 years old.
01:52:08.840 And in it, he talks about the impulse to face temptation head on and I can overcome it.
01:52:15.800 And for certain temptations, you can.
01:52:18.840 And for certain temptations that can be helpful to really take it on head on.
01:52:23.720 He says, sexual temptation is not one of them.
01:52:27.180 He said, run.
01:52:28.120 You've got to run from that.
01:52:29.920 Not stick around.
01:52:31.760 So if you're following these porn affiliate people and you're seeing that.
01:52:36.940 Yeah.
01:52:38.260 Yeah.
01:52:38.740 It's probably going to do more harm than good.
01:52:40.640 You know, you've got to be wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove.
01:52:42.880 Yeah.
01:52:43.320 So for me, I had people in my life to say, here's how I'm feeling.
01:52:48.140 This is what I'm going through.
01:52:49.200 This is what I'm doing.
01:52:50.220 It's not a good idea because what I didn't have in my life is people to both encourage
01:52:56.680 me and correct me.
01:52:59.420 Because we need to be called up, you know, and called out sometimes.
01:53:04.440 Yeah.
01:53:04.600 So for me, I didn't have that.
01:53:06.400 So having it in my life and saying, hey, this is what I'm doing.
01:53:09.200 Hey, Joshua, that's not a good idea.
01:53:11.760 I don't think you're in a place where this is healthy.
01:53:13.800 But, you know, eight years later, living the life I'm living now, there's people that are
01:53:17.960 in that industry that have one foot in, one foot out, or maybe have left the industry
01:53:22.540 are reaching out to me saying, I actually left or I actually did this because I see what
01:53:30.140 you're doing.
01:53:31.440 And it's not, you know, there's no promise of a wife or a husband.
01:53:36.220 There's no promise of whatever.
01:53:39.360 There's no promise of that for anybody.
01:53:40.880 You know, I mean, that's the thing is people think, well, you know, because I've made these
01:53:44.260 three choices, I can't have a wife or a husband. 0.61
01:53:46.940 Some people don't get married. 0.70
01:53:48.420 Some people, if they do get married, can't have children.
01:53:51.060 That's life.
01:53:51.560 It's a fallen world.
01:53:52.380 It's a tough place.
01:53:53.340 It doesn't need to make or break your sanctification.
01:53:57.120 Yeah.
01:53:57.380 And the beautiful thing about that, so joy is not something that's circumstantial.
01:54:02.880 Yeah.
01:54:03.540 Right.
01:54:04.020 Joy is something you can't obtain on your own.
01:54:06.480 It's a gift that's offered to you to be received.
01:54:10.640 And it comes through a relationship with Jesus.
01:54:12.760 Yeah.
01:54:13.360 So for me, I get to share that story.
01:54:16.940 It's like, how did you get from A to B?
01:54:19.260 I was like, well, there's one answer.
01:54:21.800 And he's a person.
01:54:22.960 He has a name.
01:54:24.200 His name is Jesus.
01:54:25.700 But for me, it was Jesus.
01:54:30.020 Again, there's so many aspects of, I'm sure that we would differ in certain things regarding
01:54:37.480 theology.
01:54:38.100 But what I love is the commitment to, like, we would differ in that, you know, what sanctification
01:54:45.140 looks like.
01:54:46.040 You know, in a moment in contrast to it being progressive and things like that.
01:54:49.960 You would say it's in a moment?
01:54:51.180 Right.
01:54:51.820 Okay.
01:54:52.040 Topic for another time.
01:54:54.180 Yeah, yeah.
01:54:54.500 Sure, sure, sure.
01:54:55.220 Yeah.
01:54:55.580 Yeah.
01:54:55.780 So, I mean, just like, you know, you've got salvation, sanctification, justification,
01:55:00.760 and what those things look like.
01:55:02.280 But salvation is progressive in that you are progressively being changed.
01:55:08.700 Yeah, yeah.
01:55:09.180 So, progressively, there's this journey that you go on, and as you're going on that journey,
01:55:16.260 like, you have to take steps of faith.
01:55:18.880 Yeah.
01:55:19.020 And those steps have to be away from, like, 2 Corinthians 5.17 is real for the life of a
01:55:25.500 believer.
01:55:26.040 The person that you used to be is dead, and now you have a new identity, a new heart,
01:55:33.020 a new purpose.
01:55:34.000 But you have to move towards that purpose.
01:55:36.260 Yeah.
01:55:36.680 Right.
01:55:37.360 Because you still have free will.
01:55:38.800 Yeah, you have the free will to-
01:55:40.620 Reject God's grace.
01:55:41.540 Yeah, to go back.
01:55:42.700 Right.
01:55:43.340 And so, for me, it's like, step by step, these are the steps that I took, but it started with
01:55:50.440 this one catalyst that is irreplaceable.
01:55:53.600 There's this one piece of the puzzle that you can't replace, but these steps along the
01:55:58.460 way, and people are seeing that, and they're responding to the fact.
01:56:01.860 It's like, it's not that, you know, you have this or you have that.
01:56:06.400 It's, you've got this joy that I didn't think I could ever have, and you believe that.
01:56:14.360 This inarticulable, undeniable joy that lives within you, for instance.
01:56:18.680 Yeah.
01:56:18.960 But it's like, I want that, but the fact that you have it, it's intriguing enough to
01:56:27.100 me to ask the questions.
01:56:28.680 It reminds me of a line from C.S.
01:56:30.140 Lewis, when he said, when you're a kid, you think chocolate is the greatest thing.
01:56:35.280 You cannot imagine anything greater than chocolate.
01:56:38.400 Yeah.
01:56:38.560 And if someone came up to you, these days, I guess this would happen in a kindergarten
01:56:41.680 classroom, but someone comes up to you and says, hey, you ever hear about sex?
01:56:45.120 And you're a kid, you say, I don't know.
01:56:46.400 I don't know what sex is.
01:56:47.280 Yeah.
01:56:48.000 Guy says, well, you know, sex is great.
01:56:50.340 It's better than chocolate.
01:56:51.280 Yeah.
01:56:51.900 And if you're a kid, you have to think, well, I guess sex involves chocolate.
01:56:56.920 Because chocolate is the best thing.
01:56:58.480 So whatever is better, it's got to involve chocolate.
01:57:00.420 Yeah.
01:57:00.620 And you don't realize there's something better.
01:57:02.440 And unfortunately, in our culture, that's kind of where people stop.
01:57:05.620 Sure.
01:57:05.920 It would seem a lot today is better.
01:57:07.600 Okay, no, you're right.
01:57:08.580 Sex is better than chocolate, and sex is the best thing.
01:57:10.720 But there is an even better thing.
01:57:13.400 Yeah.
01:57:13.540 There are many better things, and there's ultimately a highest good.
01:57:16.880 Yeah.
01:57:17.060 Which is what your desire is supposed to be.
01:57:19.760 Yeah.
01:57:20.480 And I love that, you know, so because like suicidal ideation is part of my story, it's like there's a project that I'm working on where there's these, you know, this organization called Stay Here, and there are organizations around that.
01:57:35.820 You know, every 40 seconds, someone dies of suicide.
01:57:40.940 So we did one project where you would appreciate this.
01:57:45.840 We just took a bunch of different Christian influencers, and we just read through the Apostles' Creed.
01:57:52.280 And we read through the Apostles' Creed, and that was it.
01:57:54.400 But it was not one person.
01:57:56.000 It was many people.
01:57:56.880 It wasn't, you know, one organization.
01:57:58.640 It was many organizations, many people, one message, one unified message, a reflection of John 17.
01:58:04.260 Yeah.
01:58:04.360 You know, this unified message.
01:58:05.500 When people see, you know, when the world sees us, you'll see a reflection of Christ.
01:58:10.560 So we did that, and then our next project is we're working with NFL quarterbacks.
01:58:15.780 So we've got like 15 Super Bowl winners, like multiple like Hall of Famers, and we're doing this video, and they're just simply saying, stay here.
01:58:26.040 You know, you're loved, because that's what I didn't think.
01:58:32.800 I didn't think that I was loved.
01:58:34.740 I didn't think that I mattered.
01:58:37.500 And just seeing that God is allowing me to be just a small part in projects like that, and do some of the things I'm doing, and live the life that I'm living.
01:58:47.400 And, you know, I wake up every day, and it's like a dream, you know?
01:58:54.040 I have friends who got to your point where they were just about to do it.
01:59:01.460 And I have friends who did it.
01:59:04.520 I have multiple friends who did it.
01:59:06.020 Yeah.
01:59:07.400 And you think, what that thin line, that moment.
01:59:14.200 Because it'd be one thing if you just knew a lot of people, not a lot, but some number of people, who came up to the brink, and then they pulled back.
01:59:21.620 And you say, okay, well, maybe that's just a feature of suicidal ideation.
01:59:24.760 You get up to a point, and then you go no further.
01:59:26.840 Yeah.
01:59:27.300 But knowing, and you know more people than I do who killed themselves.
01:59:30.780 You know, no, people go over that line.
01:59:33.020 That's a real cliff, and people fall off it all the time.
01:59:37.080 And you got up that close, and then a bank teller said my name.
01:59:44.200 And what's wild, so my friend Jacob, who's the CEO and founder of that organization, Stay Here, he says simply, it's the easiest thing that you could ever, you know, just dealing with suicide.
02:00:06.460 It's much easier than you would think in that the person just needs to be asked, hey, are you thinking about taking your life?
02:00:15.880 And more often than not, research says they'll say yes.
02:00:18.600 And then once they say it, it becomes real, and then you can have a conversation.
02:00:27.740 Like the guy who jumps off a building, anyone who survives that says instantly they regretted it.
02:00:35.500 Well, in the air.
02:00:36.600 In the air.
02:00:36.880 Like many times, I forget, I think someone jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge or whatever, which how they lived, I'm not sure.
02:00:45.320 But literally the second you did it, it's like, God help me, you know?
02:00:51.900 Yeah, right, right.
02:00:53.100 And so just to even put that out there, I mean, getting back to, I guess, the top point of the conversation,
02:01:00.320 the power of a word and the power of a name to identify things and distinguish between them,
02:01:06.740 I mean, so much of the political correctness or this kind of agenda that seems so destructive is about calling things by fake names
02:01:19.220 in order to manipulate how people view them, view themselves.
02:01:23.380 Yeah, and I love, like, in Hebrew, my name means Yahweh is salvation.
02:01:29.020 Of course.
02:01:29.940 Yeah, and then so our first son, we named him Cannon.
02:01:34.620 So Cannon in Hebrew means measuring stick.
02:01:36.420 So for me, never thought I would be a father.
02:01:38.320 So he was the measure of God's grace to me in my life.
02:01:45.040 Can't beat that as a place to end.
02:01:47.480 Joshua, pleasure to have you.
02:01:48.920 Yeah, absolutely.
02:01:49.600 Thanks for coming on.
02:01:50.380 Yeah, thank you.