Fight Laugh Feast 2023:Michael Foster, Keith Foskey, Jason Farley, Cody Fields, Davis Younts DMW#192

Dead Men Walking

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Let's see you sing along, let's go. Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between.

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Broadcasting from an undisclosed location, Dead Men Walking starts now.

00:16

Oh, I need my muggy, guys. Where's my, I don't know where it's at, you know? Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast, but this is special.

00:25

You're gonna hear a mashup live from Fight, Laugh, Feast in the Ark Encounter. Is that Williamsburg, is that where we're at?

00:31

It is, but we're no longer from an undisclosed location. I know, I really. I was gonna try and keep it quiet because of that, but.

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So here's what happens. We announce an undisclosed location and then I immediately tell everyone where I'm at. That's what we do on Dead Men Walking.

00:44

From an undisclosed location, four, five, four, three. Yeah, so that is the voice to my right, if you're watching, to your left, the voice of Jason Farley.

00:54

How are you, Jason? Doing great. And sitting to his right, go ahead and introduce yourself.

01:00

Keith Foskey. Keith Foskey. I don't have enough of you in my, say that again. There's never enough of Keith Foskey.

01:05

There's never enough of me. That's why he has to keep eating at McDonald's. Say it again, say it again, say it again. Testing one.

01:10

There we are. That's how we do things unprofessionally here at Dead Men Walking. We don't have the right volume levels and we just start the program.

01:17

Cool. But, so Keith's hanging out with me. He came down to Fight, Laugh, Feast. We have a booth here.

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And so you're just gonna be like jumping in on some of these episodes, maybe do a few. I'm gonna be the Andy Richter to your

01:28

Conan O 'Brien. I'm gonna be your sidekick. Color commentary. Oh, I like that. Which you know,

01:34

Andy Richter, full disclosure, he didn't say a lot, but when he did, it was good. It was funny. He just got in there, said his funny lines.

01:41

Yeah, and got out and got paid. That's the way to do it. And Jason, oh, go ahead. We're getting paid? I'm getting paid. I was just fixing to say.

01:48

In sparkling water, yes. I have a sparkling water for each of you afterwards. But of course, Jason, associated with lore .tv.

01:56

Give me the official title that you hold there again. I am the chief content officer. So I find the movies and television shows that we put on the platform.

02:06

Yeah, so we talked with you and Marcus, geez, that was a couple years ago now.

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It was in South Dakota, I think the last time you were on. We had a fun time. You kind of explained to everyone what it is you guys are doing.

02:17

We've got some new listeners since then. So maybe in a nutshell, just tell everyone what it is lore .tv does again.

02:23

Yeah, so we're a new funding and streaming platform. So we're trying to solve the problem that makes

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Christian movies suck so bad. Yeah. Right, by connecting the creators directly with an audience through our website so that the audience can decide what movies they want to see made, what movies and TV shows that they want to see made.

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And so we put up movies and TV shows and let the audience vote with their loot.

02:52

Yeah, so this is an interesting concept. So, you know, I paid Netflix or whoever pays, whatever astronomical amount they're up to now, 17 bucks a month or something, if you want to share passwords.

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I think that's what it is, you know. Funny thing is that's how they sold their platform eight years ago.

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Hey, you can get a miniature as much as you want, right? Everything comes to an end when you need to see increased profits.

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So I send them that money. I don't get to have a say in what I want to see. And most of it's garbage, dude. They're all about quantity now.

03:20

Netflix used to be about quality. Let's put as much stuff up there, put a fancy little digital poster so you click on it and it's not that great of content to where you guys go, hey, pay us a couple bucks each month.

03:32

We'll convert that into kind of like a digital loot or shareable loot. Yeah, digital currency. And then throw it at what you want to see.

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So when something has enough loot or is fully funded, then you get to see it. So it's this kind of cool thing where as a subscriber, you get to choose what content you see.

03:48

Yeah, what content goes onto the platform, right? So that way you're building out a platform that other people will want to see too and that other people will come and see.

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So it's basically you get to be kind of super fan of particular projects and help bring those projects into the world.

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And then they exist in the world and everybody on the platform can watch them whether they funded it or not. But it is a way of sort of paying it forward.

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I'm helping this get made, helping this come out. And that way the rest of the world can come watch it too.

04:26

Yeah, and one of the things you guys had too, which drew me in was your tagline from years ago.

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And I went, oh, I'm gonna like these guys. Their tagline is Christian movies shouldn't suck. It's close to that.

04:36

There's a couple of taglines. And I resonated with that. That's been one of our more popular taglines, yeah.

04:42

Yeah, just - So you're not gonna have Alex Kendrick films on? That's hurtful. Forgive me,

04:49

Lord. The Kendrick brothers make really long sermon illustrations. Yeah.

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And they know that's what they're doing. That's what they make. Is they're not really trying to make movies per se as in the sense that it's the art of a movie.

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They're making sermon illustrations because they're pastors and that's what they do. Right, yeah. So what are you guys geared towards?

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I mean, you have a wide range of content. What are you looking for when you're looking, because you're the content guy, what are you looking for when you're looking for content?

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What I'm looking for is the storytellers that are looking to serve an audience, right?

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So rather than looking to, you know, right now you go out and you, whether it's Netflix or Disney, everywhere you go, they're really making propaganda for an ideology most of the time.

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You know, you get something good here and there, but most of it's just propaganda and the art of just making a movie that serves an audience.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Making a TV show that's just a good story that's serving an audience. That's what we're looking for.

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So we've got some really great content like Barely Biblical, which is animated stuff, teddy bears acting out the most violent

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Old Testament Bible stories. It's just wonderful. I think the tagline on that was, and they're bears, so it's okay.

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It's like they're animated bears, so we can do it. Chopping their heads off and running swords through their guts. Here's your 204 skins, my lord.

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No, seriously, that's one of the jokes in the pilot. Yeah, they look at Michael and one of the brothers said, she's worth at least 114.

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Yeah, yeah, I'm glad. It's the greatest pickup line in history. You are near. I'm glad Keith and Jason are talking because these guys are going to be friends because you guys both have that weird sense of humor that's just awesome.

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You know, it's like, where'd that come from? But so yeah, so stuff like that. So animated, are you guys? We've got, so we've got, yeah, animated.

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We've got some adult animation that's about to be announced. We've got stand -up comedy.

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We've got kind of conservative, underground, patriotic stand -up comedy that's going on right now.

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And we've got, and then we've got Western and we've got some documentaries and we've got a great reality show called

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Breaking Laws with comedian Joseph Granda and he's traveling the country breaking the most ridiculous laws he can find and then he turns himself into the cops and sees what they do.

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You know what's funny about it. And then he finds a pastor in town and asks if he broke Romans 13. Yeah. It's just such a funny show.

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He messaged me probably about a year and a half ago and he goes, hey, would you be on, would you be guest on this new podcast

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I'm doing where I'm researching like crazy laws that you can break? I go, sure, yeah. Then I didn't hear back from him for like six months and then

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I messaged him and then he's like, oh, I'm working with Laura TV. We turned that down. I said, okay, that's fine. But I'm glad that you guys hooked up because that was a great premise.

07:35

Yeah. Great idea. And it's cool to see you guys kind of have that wide foundation of different stuff.

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Sometimes when streaming platforms first start, they really focus on just one thing. It's all docs. It's all animation.

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It's like, you guys are kind of, and like you said, it's subscriber funded. So if they want to kind of, you put something out there and people respond to it, look, we're making it.

07:56

Great. And that's exactly it. So we've got an upcoming one. This is an example of a satirical rom -com called

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The Lesbian and the Lumberjack about a woman who thinks she's a lesbian, but it turns out she's just never met a real man.

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Oh. Oh my God. And it's the sort of thing where you think, I think there's an audience for it, but it's not gonna get made on speculation in Hollywood anywhere.

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Right. But if we can take it to the audience and say, isn't this a movie you'd like to see? And they say yes, then it's, we've already got the

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Christmas village in Central Oregon reserved and can film it in. You have to get Kevin Sorbo to play the lumberjack.

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I hear he's looking for work. I just. He works a lot. I'm just kidding. And he's actually a really good actor.

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It's just not always great options out there, but that dude acts in a ton of stuff.

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Well, he acts in a ton of stuff, but also with his beliefs and what he's outspoken about, it's a death sentence in Hollywood to say the things that he says.

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Sure. I mean, there's three or four guys to where even like, I'm a big comedy fan. Even the guys around in the late eighties, early nineties,

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Dennis Miller started even just going conservative, not Christian. Just conservative. And he goes, it was a public, it was like a choice.

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I go, I'm not gonna have work anymore. And just by being conservative. So that's another thing too, where you see these guys that lean a certain way or have a certain agenda that's not

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Hollywood's agenda. Dean Cain's another example. He pretty much got exiled as soon as he stands up for pro -life and stuff like that.

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I'm one of those weird people that think Dean Cain is a great Superman. I thought he was the best too. Yeah, he was really good.

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What was the show? Lois and Clark, right? Lois and Clark, yeah. Oh, I love that show. That was, because I grew up with Christopher Reeves.

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He was the next one. Right. And I've been a Superman fan. I have a comic book collection.

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That's sort of my thing. You're right. We are gonna get along. I told you. So. I have a file at my comic book shop around the corner from my house where they just set aside the ones they know

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I'm gonna buy. So I just go in once a month and they're like, hey Jason, here's your Hellboy and here's your, all my favorite comics.

10:08

We should do a DC Marvel debate. Yeah. As long as I can argue for Dark Horse, then we're good.

10:14

Yeah, okay, all right. So wait a minute. As a non -comic dude, what is Dark Horse? I do know DC and Marvel, so I'm not that dumb.

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But like, I don't. Dark Horse is a smaller comic book publishing company that does more experimental stuff.

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Okay. They did Hellboy, right? They did Hellboy, yeah. Hellboy, yeah. Okay, so yeah, you're one of those hipster comic guys like.

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You can tell I'm hipster. Well, I'm just saying, it's like, well. You can tell I'm hipster. Not mainstream comic. Because of how thin I am.

10:45

Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I wear skinny jeans, but it's because I have no other choice. Yeah, yeah. When you're our size, all jeans are skinny jeans.

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I hear you, I hear you guys. No, that's good. But yeah, comics

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I never really got into. I was a big Trekkie growing up. Okay. But never into, probably because I grew up fundamentalist, too.

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It was kind of like, hey, drums are bad, comics are bad, everything's Satan. But atheistic space travel's good.

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Yes, yeah. Which, looking back on that, if you go back and watch TNG even, the next generation was kind of my generation in the 80s.

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That's the one I watched, too. Yeah, lots of progressive agenda stuff going on there. Like, so hardcore.

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More than anything that was going on in pop culture. You're like, oh, they really snuck it in there. So I was allowed to watch that for some reason.

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But. The progressive movement's always coming from space. You gotta be careful. You gotta watch it.

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Yeah, they come from space. Gotta watch out for the lesbian alien. That's his next show. That's his next show. The lesbian alien.

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Lesbian aliens and the lumberjacks who love them. Did we just create a new comic together?

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Yeah, we did. Oh, man. Earth Girls were easy, but not anymore. That's the musical.

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We can't define what Earth Girls are. Yeah, they don't even know what a woman is down there. Let's go. It's the sequel.

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Yeah. I interviewed the guy who wrote. Oh, he was on Jimmy Kimmel. Amish vampires from space.

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You've ever heard that book? No, but that sounds incredible. Got really. Jimmy, Jimmy Kimmel picked it up and was talking about it and like put his sails through the roof.

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And but he's a he's a believer. He's a reformed believer. But I got a 12 hour car ride home.

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You got to get the audio book vampires from space. I can't believe I've never heard of it. That's it's this weird thing, too, to where it's like it uses a lot of the principles of the

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Amish and conservatism. And they're fighting this thing in space. It's you think it wouldn't go together. I got about halfway through before I talked about like this is actually not bad.

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It's it's it's a bestseller. But yeah, any of that science fiction stuff I get a little interested in, you know, but.

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So anyway, back to lore or we can just talk about anything, but I'm really excited about lore, too, because like I said,

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I was. Geez, we got someone in the background, you know, I was kind of, you know, there when you guys were kind of when

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Marcus and you guys because you came on really early to just toss the idea around to now seeing it a lot more places in just a few short years.

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I don't think people understand how hard it is to do a startup, how to get funding. So if anyone's listening right now to who they contact or go to, if they want to, you know, you guys are still taking investors or not.

13:26

Yeah, we're we're still taking investors. So we we've got the tech built and it's launched and it's running.

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And we've we've got all of our numbers and customer acquisition costs. And so we're out still still looking for some investment, although mostly we're just looking for subscribers.

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Yeah, but the we're we're at basically closing out our

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SAFE round on the investment side. OK, now that we're launched and before we you know, we're not going to go public or anything.

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We're just trying to find some investors. So if they want more information, go to Lord dot TV. Yeah, there's there's there's actually a spot where you if you're interested in investing, that we've still got the tab up there because we because that's what we spent, you know, the last couple of years doing is is finding investment to run a beta and then finding investment to turn that beta into reality and get it launched.

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And yeah, so that tab is still there won't be there for very much longer because. Right. I imagine, though, you know, if someone walked up to you six months from now and said, hey,

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I want to invest five million dollars and you depend on the terms. But you're right. Yeah, the terms are right. You want to turn it down, right?

14:35

Yeah, that's crazy, man. If you have five million dollars and no terms, no terms.

14:41

Yeah, exactly. So we give this to you. Yeah. I mean, I think I think that when when the guy's just like, hey,

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I heard you on Dead Man, here's five million dollars. I just want the lesbian in Lumberjacks in space. Is that what it was?

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It was an Amish lesbian. But but yeah, I mean, when you when you're a customer, we we know the value of the tech we built and we know the value of the customer's acquisition costs.

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And so. Right, right, right. So so that that's what I mean by depending on the term. It's like we we've built, you know, a money printing machine.

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And so we don't want to sell it off too much. It's funny. Oh, man. All right.

15:17

Cool. Anything else going on, man? We're we're at the conference. This is going to be clips, you guys, from Fight Left Feast in at the

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Ark and you almost said the Ark Museum Ark Encounter. So you're going to have all these different guests.

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We're going to mash them up for you. Probably come out in a few episodes. But Jason, you're the first. Yeah. I'm so glad to see you again, man.

15:36

Yeah. It's good to be here. I know we kind of pass each other. We only really see each other at these conferences because I think you guys are out in Arizona or now.

15:44

Where are you at? I'm in Spokane, Washington, Spokane. Yeah. He's moved up from the Bay Area. Yeah. It's gorgeous out there, though, right?

15:50

Oh, it's amazing. Never been out there. But it is gorgeous that they Northwest come out here and people are like, yeah, we're going over to the mountains.

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I'm like, well, because you live in the Rocky Mountains. This is a real mountain, right? You know, you're like, this is what the psalmist said about foothills.

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This is a mountain. This is. Yeah. It's funny because on the way down here, John, who came down here with me, sit right behind Keith there.

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He said, we're going to see some mountains. I said, I think they're foothills because I mean, the mountains are mountains.

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I'm from Florida. So it's all you're like, it's all about the swamps and valleys.

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I remember the first time I was coming as a kid, I was coming up and I saw the mountain rise about likely because you're driving.

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It starts to rise up. Yeah. And I and I had this sort of Godzilla moment. It's real. Yeah. What is that?

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As a mountain, I hope somebody's got a giant mech somewhere. All right, cool, man.

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We'll shut it down, guys. Thanks for stopping by, though. And we'll be here. You guys will be hearing from me.

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And then also, Keith's going to, like I said, going to jump in on some, too, just because we like Keith.

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He's a good dude. We like hanging out. He's fun and he's he's smart and intelligent and handsome.

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And you got to pay me later. You have $50. Okay, well, you're paying him. This is what

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I'm talking about. Terms like the terms are shifting before my eyes. Greg is the reason I'm a politician. That's right.

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Builds me up. All right, guys, go check it out. Lord TV, super cool, fun way to fund stuff and see what you want to see on there.

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And it's and it's stuff that doesn't suck. It's not the run of the mill Christian stuff. It's going to be in your face.

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It's funny, just kind of like how we're talking here. And you go, what? That's a Christian podcast. You could say the

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L word. Yes, we can talk about those things. We can animate those things. We can. Well, not maybe not. Not the ax.

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I'm digging a hole here. You understand what I'm saying? We can talk about these themes that are sharp, sharp objects.

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And I'm concerned with the L word is for animating all your animated lesbian. OK, we're done.

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Bye. We're out. Never mind. Never mind. Oh, we're recording everywhere, dude. It's already started.

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Yeah. You didn't know it. Have you ever seen Office Space? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

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That's a classic. What would you do if you had a million dollars? I tell you what, I'd do nothing.

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You just ask me what I'd do nothing. Pretty good at it, man.

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You ain't got a million dollars. Do nothing. My cousin don't do nothing. Yeah, he's broke. Don't do crap.

18:18

Yeah, he's broke. Don't do nothing. Don't do crap. Yeah, that was a good that was a sleeper movie that did not do well at the box office.

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And then just, you know, anyone who has ever worked corporate or office understands America Online and AT &T.

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Me, too. And AT &T Center. Yeah. Oh, on my on my drive here. It was 12 hour drive.

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Yeah. A lot of people like, oh, I listen podcast. I listen to a sermon. Very spiritual people. What I did. They listen to the same

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Vody Bauckham sermon on repeat so they can memorize it. I want to be able to preach like Vody. Now, what I did was

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I listened to movies that I know so well that I don't have to look at the screen.

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Yeah. Yeah. So the four movies that I listened to on the way here. We're smoking the bandit because I was driving.

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Yeah. And I wanted you. You wanted your your truck to to fly.

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I love smoking the bandit. You have no idea how you are driving the right truck down to this conference for that. I was behind you last night with those duallys and that glass packs on it.

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You're just swerving all. I'm like, dude, he's running from the law right now. What is going on? The movie

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Vacation. All driving movies. Yeah. So it was Vacation and Tommy Boy.

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Oh, Tommy. You know, that's if you don't think about that. That's a row ads. That's a road trip movie.

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Yeah, I know. It totally is. Yeah. I remember the other one. Wait a minute, Tommy. Yeah. Tommy Boy is the one with the brakes and everything.

19:45

And then Black Sheep is the political one, right? Yes. Black Sheep is a political one. Yeah, because one of my favorite scenes in Black Sheep is when

19:51

I don't know if you've seen it, but when he's delivering the when he's out, you know, because I knock doors as a elected official.

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So he's got every vote counts and he's at the top of the hill. And then he just falls down a hill for eight minutes.

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You know, a little route. He's hanging on to the route. It falls again. And he has the best line. He just gets up and goes, what the heck was that all about?

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That was like I've had those times while door knocking, you know, sweating. I trip in some guy's ditch.

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I'm just like, Lord, what is good? But yeah, Tommy Boy's good, too, though. It's funny because I just had we were really big in hospitality in our church.

20:27

So, I mean, we've got a young church, got about 650, 700 people. Probably half of them are under the age of 30.

20:34

Big families were really big in, you know, making sure we're multiplying and, you know, taking dominion mandate.

20:41

Yeah, that's right. So but because of that, I get invited to a lot of dinners, probably once a week. And most of these guys are in there.

20:48

Who do we have over there? So I just saw the coolest hair. You, my friend, have awesome hair.

20:54

He's not even looking at me. Well, you that's right. That is sweet. I'm going to make this story short at the conference, right?

21:01

Essentially, what I'm saying is I noticed I'm the old man now because of my movie references when I go to dinner with these early 20 somethings.

21:08

You know, I'm like, yeah, you know, like in Dumb and Dumber and Tommy Boy. They're like, what? Yeah, I've never seen that. I get the same thing musically being a being a mid 2000s emo and pop punk kid heart.

21:20

Right. Oh, yeah. That Taking Back Sunday album. And they're like their eyes glaze. Who's that?

21:25

Yeah, they're like, we listen. That's not Post Malone. You know? Yeah. And we listen to a little muzzy or I don't know who they are making up rappers.

21:33

I've never listened to music. You're a good Baptist, you know? No, it's not that.

21:38

I just I literally when I was a kid, I would I would take movies. And like I said, on my car trip,

21:44

I would take movies. I had VHS player and an audio recorder, and I would record the movies on audio. My first time

21:49

I went out. Oh, so you're pirating copyrighted music and audio, audio and video.

21:55

That's to the FBI. My wife got in my car the first time she opened it up. Yeah, my tape case.

22:01

And she's like, why does this say a goofy movie? But it wasn't the soundtrack from a goofy.

22:07

It's literally a goofy movie. It was the movie. I had filmed her video because I'm just that guy.

22:14

Wait, isn't there a cartoon movie called A Goofy Movie, though? That's the movie. That's the one I'm talking about. Oh, you had actually

22:19

I had taken the I had taken the VHS tape, recorded onto a audio tape and listened to it while I drove.

22:26

And let me tell you something. Powerline was the greatest artist ever. Wait, see.

22:32

OK, I was so confusing. So you're listening to video. You're listening to a movie.

22:37

I'm listening to this. But you're not watching it. No, I can watch it right here. I've got it all up here, baby. I know this movie.

22:44

My I don't know why I have this stupid photographic memory. I remember everything I see. Wow. In fact, my brother,

22:50

I'll tell you a story about my brother. OK, I'm sorry. I mean, like, this is crazy. We will allow it. My brother. Welcome to Keith's show, everyone, where he tells all the stories, says all the things and no one else gets to talk.

23:01

Go ahead, Keith. Talk about your brother. That's Keith Foskey, by the way.

23:06

And Cody Fields from Westminster Effects. And now we know Keith. He's been on the podcast. They both have. And we're just chopping it up here at Fight Lab Feast a little bit.

23:13

Everyone knows Keith. Like four people know who I am. Yeah. One person knows who I am. Four people knows who Cody is.

23:18

And Keith is getting selfie requests every 15 minutes. It's it's more often than that.

23:24

Yeah, let's be let's be honest. Now he's starting to charge and we're not allowed to look him directly in the eyes.

23:29

That is one of his rules. We did bring him all the green M &Ms that was on his rider. We can only speak to him if he speaks to us first.

23:36

Yep. And if he walks into the room, we have to stand up. That's true. Yeah, he said. He said, I'm going to charge him like a bull.

23:43

He has been real. He told me personally, he's thinking about a light bow. He would like a light bow to stand up.

23:49

You know, kind of an Asian Japanese kind of quesadilla. Yes, I do.

23:55

I do have a black belt. That's true. That is a fourth degree or it's a fourth degree, but fifth degree black belt. Sorry.

24:00

I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to steal a degree from everybody. But this degree, he looked at me when I said four degrees.

24:05

Thank you, son of a it's five. It's fifth degree. All right, go ahead.

24:11

Your brother, anyway, just my brother, my brother. He calls me one day and he goes,

24:18

Hey, man, you know, I was having I was having a rough night the other night. He was all by himself. He's got through some stuff. And he goes,

24:23

But but I want to know if this ever happens to you. He said, Do you ever just lay at night and watch a movie in your head?

24:30

And you're like, We are related. Absolutely. I could start right now.

24:35

And one really one crazy summer is my favorite movie of all time. John Cusack to me more in the beautiful days when

24:41

Bobcat Goldwaite was an actual cultural phenomenon. And I can watch that movie beginning to end in my head.

24:47

No way. I can't do it right now. The very first thing is the cute and fuzzy bunnies. He's drawing the cartoons.

24:53

It's awesome. Can I tell you something? Did is it is the right word? Juxt juxtaposition that juxtapose that.

25:01

I was watching Mission Impossible four or three, whatever the last one was on Prime.

25:10

We lost count. And I got. Yeah, it's whatever the last one was. I got halfway through. I'm halfway through it. And I'm like, Oh, I bet you

25:16

I know he's going to do it. That guy's probably the bad guy. Right. And I'm so proud of myself to my wife. I said, I figured this out.

25:21

She goes, You watch that last month. I watched it 30 days prior and I didn't even know it.

25:28

I was halfway through it. I thought I was figuring out the plot. I figured it out. It was like a remnant of a memory.

25:34

And I was like, Oh, I bet you that guy. She's like, You just watched this a month ago. So that's how I remember movies.

25:40

Not at all. I'm I'll cop to being not a huge movie guy. But the two movies that I can quote pretty much front to back are

25:48

Monty Python and the Holy Grail and O Brother Where Art Thou? Yeah. O Brother Where Art Thou has some family significance to me.

25:56

So my entire extended family, my parents, et cetera, are all from northeast Mississippi, from Corinth and Alcorn County.

26:03

OK, but not to not to Corinth, not to Corinth. We just don't know what we're talking about.

26:12

That's a Trump joke from two Corinthians. Yeah. But O Brother Where Art Thou was filmed and set in Tishomingo County, right next to where my parents grew up.

26:22

Nice. And I tell you, not much has changed from the 1930s in Tishomingo County.

26:27

There's still nothing there. What is it with Tishomingo? Tishomingo. Is that is that Native American?

26:33

I assume so. I assume so. One Texaco. Hey, where's my

26:40

I need my. Oh, I just erased all my drafts. So there we go. We need a lap track for him. Oh, yeah.

26:46

The only drop I have left on here is my is my favorite. When Joel Osteen. Oh, go ahead and hit that when he's talking to who is

26:54

Larry King. I almost said Larry David. Good, Larry King. No, not he's like, not great, not great value.

27:00

John Piper. It was awesome because, you know, great value, but you know how

27:06

Larry King was. He was like, so, Joel, I'm a Jew. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in Jesus.

27:12

Am I going to hell? Go. And his was his answer. I just I'm very careful about saying who wouldn't wouldn't go to heaven.

27:18

I just think that only God can judge a person's heart. And then two weeks later, he had

27:23

Bono on and he asked him the exact same question. And Bono just lays out the gospel for Bono Bono.

27:31

He goes and goes, Look, there's only one way to the father. It's through Christ. You know, he changed my life.

27:37

And you're like, so the rock star is preaching the gospel to Larry King. But the mega pastor.

27:44

Yeah, I can't. I can't judge. I don't know who goes to heaven and who doesn't. And I match those two videos up before.

27:49

And I always post it about once a year just to remind people, you know, you can't really, you know, that Bono is a better Christian or just at least we already professing the gospel.

28:01

Yeah. For your listeners who aren't familiar with me, I have a pedal called the Osteen Distortion that Joel Osteen knows about.

28:08

Yeah, we'll put it up if you're watching. Yeah, I'll add it in his music minister. One of them, at least, confronted me about it at a trade show several years ago, and he was adamant that Joel Osteen was not a health and wealth preacher.

28:20

He's like, no. And I really got home from that trade show. And this guy is playing guitar.

28:27

And Joel Osteen lays out the most health and wealth bullcrap I've ever heard in my life. And I'm like, are you kidding me right now?

28:33

Yeah. So he was trying to tell because he you said he worked for Joel Osteen, worked with him, right? Yeah. And he worked and he found your pedal for a worship musician magazine, which is, you know, because what's on the

28:44

Joel Osteen effects pedal for for guitar. That's what we're talking about here. Westminster effects.

28:49

He does effects pedals. What's the settings? Tell us really quick, because I love the EQ section. So your bass, metal and treble is labeled health.

28:57

The gain, the amount of distortion is a wealth. And then the volume knob is labeled.

29:02

Listen, friend. Listen, friend. Yeah. So, yeah, that's good. His his music director was not happy with me.

29:10

But then the next year, he was kind of walking down the road at the same trade show and realizes that I was the next booth too late.

29:19

Total deer in the headlights. So, of course, he had to try the pedal. Right. And then he liked it. And then he liked it.

29:25

Gotcha. Yeah. Oh, that sounds like that Osteen distortion. So what else we got going on today?

29:30

Obviously, guys, if you're listening to this, this is a mashup from Fight, Laugh, Feast. We're podcasting here until Saturday evening.

29:38

I've been here since Wednesday. So we got a few days here and we're on a break. We've got who do we got coming up next?

29:43

I think it's with session three. Oh, it's Ben Merkle. I think it's Ben Merkle we talked to last night.

29:48

He's going to swing by. So hopefully we hear from him, get an update on New St. Andrews College out there.

29:54

You guys got anything else? Rigney later. Joe Rigney. I think Wilson. We got Doug Wilson, Michael Foster tomorrow.

30:02

Yeah. And I just got a text from Michael. He's going to try to swing by and jump on. And we're going to talk about maybe his book and all the controversy he calls by just talking about biblical manhood.

30:12

Oh, very good. Who would have thought? Yeah. You say it's good to be a man and it's good to be masculine. It's good to work and provide for your family.

30:17

And you write a book about it. And people go, you can't say those things. Is the council of for a biblical manhood and womanhood not good enough for you?

30:26

Right. Well, most of those people that are saying that, though, they have a real they them vibe vibe.

30:32

If you know what I'm saying, you know what I mean? So I understand what you are saying. Oh, man.

30:37

All right, cool. We got anything else before we head out? I know you got to go somewhere. You got to go do the thing. But guys, if you're listening, make sure you check out

30:44

Keith, your Calvinist on Twitter, and then make sure I say the

30:49

Calvinist podcast. Dot com is the easiest way. Calvinist podcast dot com. And then check out Westminster effects.

30:55

Cody Fields, he makes great guitar effects. Guys, we'll be back with more guests in just a minute.

31:01

Thanks. But yeah, we're at Fight Lab Feast, guys. Welcome back with the guys from Stand With Warriors, a phenomenal organization.

31:09

I'm not going to talk too much about it because these are the subject experts. Why don't you guys introduce yourself?

31:15

I know probably our listeners know Davis here. He's been on a few times and he's back. But how about these two brothers in the

31:21

Lord? I'm Danny O 'Neal. Get right up on that mic, dude. Eat it. Go ahead. I want I sprayed it.

31:27

It's covid free. You can pull it right up to the. Yeah, pull it right up to the mouth and talk into it.

31:32

I am Danny O 'Neal, part of the Warriors organization that we're repurposing for. Nice.

31:38

And I'll head the discipleship and evangelism arm of steel teams and special forces eventually.

31:44

OK. And who do we have over here? I'm a former. Hold on. Hold on.

31:50

What we're going to do is we're going to take you off mute. This is this is the professional show I got going on here, guys.

31:56

Go ahead. Sorry. I'll watch what I say. I know you've got the power over there. Just mute.

32:03

Yeah. So my name is Caleb Bird. I'm a former. I'm a former army JAG officer. Yeah, I spent seven years in the

32:08

U .S. Army in the reserve in the active duty side. And so I've come back over to join Davis, the law firm.

32:14

Yeah. And also supporting stand with warriors on the training and advocacy side. Yeah. And Davis, go ahead.

32:19

Give us your intro to for new listeners. Sure, sure. So I'm Davis Yance. I spent 20 years in the Air Force, 11 years on active duty as a

32:26

JAG. And then I just retired in December of twenty twenty two. So I was in the room with guys like Danny that were

32:32

Navy SEALs not knowing what to do. These were the guys that were threatened to be court martial if they didn't take the vaccine. Danny was one of them.

32:38

Danny will be a little bit shy about it, but he was a Navy SEAL who was kicked out. He was kicked out of the military over refusing the vaccine for religious reasons.

32:47

After all that training and every all the obstacles you go through and the high level of achievement, and that's how they let you go.

32:55

That's insanity. That's absolutely right. So, yeah, so like like these guys said, we are Jeff Durbin.

33:00

The guys from Apology Church helped us start stand with warriors when we needed it. Now we're ready to go on the offense. OK, so we're not going to sit back.

33:07

We're not going to get caught flat footed like we did over COVID. These guys, Danny and some other Navy SEALs are going to head up the evangelism and discipleship piece.

33:14

We're going to bring the gospel to the tip of the spear in the military. Then we're going to go beyond that. We're going to go federal law enforcement.

33:19

We're going to we're going to push through this because we want to be a rallying point for that. Yeah. And we're not going to stop with the evangelism and discipleship piece.

33:26

We want to do leadership training for Christian leaders in the military. We want to do a membership based legal advocacy.

33:32

So we want just like other organizations that are out there, if you're in the military, you get in, you get into one of these positions.

33:38

We want to have a membership base of people that have the training to do it right so that we have a rallying point.

33:44

And then guys like Caleb and I are on the phone 24 hours a day. You call us. Do I sign this?

33:49

This abortion, you know, travel fee, you know, payment for for my people. Do I sign off on this transgender surgery?

33:55

We're here at this conference today. Yesterday, we found out the Department of Health and Human Services, the uniformed military health service.

34:03

People don't understand what the uniformed public health services, but it's a part of the military. It's also part of health and human services, kind of like the

34:09

Coast Guard medical. And and they just issued a policy yesterday mandating pronoun usage and mandating, mandating, a voluntary mandating.

34:19

So now if you are in in that system, you wear a uniform, you have a military rank, you will be disciplined.

34:26

You will be potentially you'll lose your career if you refuse to use pronouns. So this is this is Admiral Dick Levine.

34:32

Yeah, right. Goes by Rachel now. This is Admiral Levine's organization. So that's who's doing this.

34:37

So, you know, our fear, we're already bringing clients in now. I mean, this is like our first conference with the new stand with warriors.

34:43

We've already talked to somebody here. We're going to be bringing clients in and fighting back. This is a test run. Yeah, I think this is a test run for the rest of the military.

34:50

So depending on how this policy goes, we will see something very, very similar because they've been work grouping it come across the rest of the military.

34:56

So these are the things that we're talking about on the legal advocacy side. And then, you know, the evangelism piece is going to be a big part of that.

35:04

Wow. So needed because I almost just asked, OK, so what did you say to people who go, yeah, we had the pandemic.

35:10

That might not happen again. Why are you organized? But this is multiple fronts. This isn't just maybe vaccine or pandemic stuff.

35:19

Like you just said, this is what that just came out yesterday, right? That came out. So we're 24 hours, you know, old of, oh, you have to mandate.

35:26

And then I think you were showing me a little clip or a little part of the text, too, that was talking about uniforms, what type of uniform they can switch from day to day, the logistics of that.

35:37

So now anyone who miss misgenders or mispronounce someone, you're looking at legal action and that you guys are there for that side of it as well, too, right?

35:47

Right. That's absolutely what we want to be there for. Yeah. Yeah. So how did so this came about from pandemic, right?

35:55

That's right. And we've talked about that when you've been on the show in the past. How did you guys get? I know he said a little bit how you got involved.

36:02

So how did you guys get involved in what's the value you see in Stand With Warriors? So as far as evangelism, the discipleship piece is going to be creating infrastructure from within.

36:13

So when it first came down two years ago, we were on our heels, didn't really know how to articulate it, how to defend it legally, like through biblically from the world view and whatnot.

36:22

Like we knew, but we didn't really know how to like prove it because we had the right letters for exemptions and whatnot.

36:28

Yeah. So that's kind of the piece in this and creating and deriving everything from an ethical standard and teaching that and guiding guys in that sense of the discipleship piece.

36:38

What does that look like? Like practically when you're saying you're saying evangel discipling and evangelizing.

36:45

What does that look like? What is your organization doing when you're talking about that? So quarter, like hopefully frequent trips to certain locations where there's a population of guys that I can talk to.

36:57

So, OK, so go to Virginia Beach. That's where all my buddies are. And we'll start there and just like go down, sit down,

37:03

Bible study, hang out for the weekend or something and then hopefully branch out to the West Coast and other other locations across the

37:11

U .S. and start creating little pockets of solid Christians out of the community to go to and that are in the military or former.

37:20

Is it is it just active military? Is that what kind of you guys are looking for? Yeah, right. Active. And then we'll have a network of veterans as well to help.

37:28

But right now it's creating infrastructure from active. That's interesting. Yeah. And so Davis and the way

37:35

I got involved is and I got to know each other while I was still at trial defense services for Bragg. OK. During the pandemic, we had a we had a massive criminal case together.

37:44

We had a great victory on it. We worked together well. And so I was coming up on that point in my career where you've either got to commit to go for 20 or you got to get out.

37:53

Yeah. And so I called Davis. We had a great conversation. And then about two weeks later, Davis text me. He's like, hey, what do you think about coming over and working for me?

38:01

And so that's how I got involved coming on with staying with warriors. But one of the real important things that I'm that I saw in the military was you had a lot of people who did not want to take the vaccine.

38:13

Yeah. Did not know how to go about it and didn't know how to do it the right way. So let me let me give you an example.

38:19

I saw more than one occasion where someone had the right mentality. They didn't want to take the vaccine. But instead of being open and honest about it, they were turning over like fake vaccine cards.

38:28

Right. Now it's really easy for the army to separate you. Now, now you're a liar. I can just get rid of you. It doesn't have the vaccine.

38:34

And so where this training and advocacy piece really comes in is we know that we were all caught flat footed during covid.

38:41

Yeah. So how do we get in front of that? How do we go on the offensive? How do we get in front of those Christian leaders in the military who we help them decide beforehand?

38:49

You know what? If if a soldier comes in my office and asks for leave to go have an abortion, I'm going to deny it. And we'll help you on how to do that, what that looks like.

38:57

Yeah, because what we don't want to do is we don't want to see Christians in a situation again where they don't know how to act.

39:04

They don't know how to respond. Right. And then they're just shooting from the hip. So our hope is that we can get in front of it where now there's a plan in place for, hey,

39:12

I have a transgender soldier who wants to move into the girls' bathrooms, who wants to move into the girls' dorms, who wants to move into the girls' living spaces right now.

39:19

Here's how we're going to attack that. Here's how we're going to do it. Open, honest from a Christian worldview. And we're going to keep the fight on this front.

39:25

Yeah. And have and have the legal know how if needed, because we were talking, you know, earlier today.

39:33

It just seems like an unreal attack, especially within the military of just chaos and disarray.

39:39

And with all this kind of gender stuff coming down the pike, you're going to have servicemen and women that are going to have to make worldview choices that will most likely have legal repercussions for them very soon.

39:52

And I don't know of a lot of people doing what you guys are doing and specializing in. It seems like you're you're kind of at the forefront of this.

39:59

So anyone who's actively in the military, if you're listening to this, where can they go to find out about it first?

40:05

And like, how do they join? Is it is it an annual membership? Like, talk about that a little bit, because I think what you're doing is phenomenal.

40:12

Yeah. So we are. It's standwithwarriors .org standwithwarriors .org. I'll make sure we link it up to you.

40:18

Yes, we'll start there. That's really just a landing page right now because we're redoing it. It was very vaccine focused and we're bringing that back around.

40:24

So this is a grassroots organization. So a couple of things as far as how to engage in it. We all know because we served how difficult it can be for military members to get plugged into a good local church.

40:34

Yeah. And local churches often don't know how to minister to military members because you're only there two to three years.

40:40

Yeah. So what we want to be able to do is starting with Navy SEALs. My brother's a fighter pilot, fighter pilots, special operations guys bring guys in that community that are active or that got out like Danny and bring them in so that you have

40:52

SEALs evangelizing SEALs and growing it from there. And then just it's Operation 11 is what we're calling that piece.

40:58

So it grows out of it. And then we're hoping to get local churches partnering with us.

41:03

And so then they can say, OK, this is this is the group of people we need to get plugged in with on that military installation and we can grow our ministry as well.

41:11

Well, so that's that that piece. That's what that looks like on the on the active duty side. What we're going to be doing, we will be rolling out in a few months a membership portal for people who can join.

41:21

So it's a lot like maybe if you were a homeschool family, an organization like Heritage Defense. Sure. We will have a a small monthly fee for the year.

41:29

It's going to cost you less than an hour of an attorney's time. But if you remember, our expectation will be you sign a statement of faith.

41:35

So we know you're like minded that you're with us. And then we will have a a monthly training seminar.

41:41

So we'll we'll go through books. We'll talk about how do we build worldview? How do we prepare for these things that are coming?

41:46

What are you guys seeing? So we'll bring people together monthly. And then what will happen is 24 hours a day, if you have an issue coming, you call us and we'll be there for these administrative decisions and we will represent you and it'll be a

41:58

Caleb. Myself will have a network of attorneys because the beautiful thing about the military is Caleb's office is in Huntsville, Alabama.

42:05

I'm in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We we work in the same law firm because we serve people worldwide.

42:11

I represent military members. Caleb will represent military members all over the world because you just have to be licensed in a state to practice federal law.

42:18

So the beauty is the infrastructure can be built very, very quickly. Wow. To to leverage that, to to help these military members and we can create that network.

42:26

So that's what it's going to look like. And then, you know, the goal, the vision, the hope is we're going to expand.

42:32

It's not just going to be military, because during covid, I represented ATF agents, DEA agents, Border Patrol agents,

42:38

FBI agents, federal marshals. Same thing. These federal administrative law issues that we're going to be able to help them with, it can all be done from anywhere in the country.

42:47

And and then we can bring that network of attorneys. I was just going to say that's so interesting. So you you do want to expand and go because the federal government is so big anyway, has so many employees that you want to expand into those other federal spaces that have federal employees, right?

43:02

Just like you. Just like you said. Yeah, absolutely. You want to we want to bring the gospel to the deep state. That's right. Yeah, we want to have

43:07

Christians. I love it. Oh, I have Christians. Yeah, that's your T -shirt. You got a T -shirt that says

43:12

I'm bringing the gospel to the deep state. I'm wearing that, dude. That's absolutely what we do. I mean, it sounds funny, but that's what we want to know.

43:18

It's not. I know exactly what you mean. We need revival in the military. These guys saw it. Look, there was a downside to covid.

43:24

But Danny can talk about it. I mean, Danny can talk about his faith walk. I can talk about my faith walk because of what happened with covid and these thousands of people that came together.

43:32

I mean, at one moment in time, there were two hundred and sixty four thousand. It's over 13 percent of our military force that were saying no to this vaccine mandate.

43:40

Wow. That's that's the rallying point. So again, you know, Danny won't talk about it because that's not who he is.

43:46

But these guys were the heroes. These Navy SEALs were the heroes early on that were able to to push back on this.

43:52

Got a critical mass together so we could slow this down and push back. And like Caleb said, we don't want to ever be caught flat footed on this again.

43:59

So, yeah, the on offense, the kind of you mentioned like a heritage legal defense. I was homeschooled in the 80s and we were part of that because I had social services at the door, watched kids in school.

44:09

Right. It wasn't as prevalent as it is now. And I was thinking that during the pandemic,

44:15

I go all these people that especially, you know, federal government, military, stuff like that, that they have really no recourse.

44:22

They're not legal experts. They don't. And not only that, but they do have a biblical worldview and they can't even partner with maybe the legal expert that doesn't have that same worldview and just wants to cash their check and go, yeah, we can.

44:34

We're probably going to lose. I'll try to defend. It's like you're like the best of both worlds. And not only do you have the worldview and you're looking for people that have that same worldview and while they're making those stands, they're not just frivolously doing it to buck the system.

44:45

They're like, I have a, you know, truly held belief. And then also being part of an organization that has stellar attorneys in it that can go, if it comes to legal issues, we're going to fight for you.

44:57

Right. And we're going to fight. And probably I would I would assume you guys can find those legal avenues to make those arguments.

45:02

If it is a worldview issue or religious freedom issue or right. Is that kind of what you're doing? Yeah. And so I would point this out to the preference cascade is real.

45:10

OK. And so there are still very strong Christian, even reformed Christian people in the military.

45:16

The problem is when you have something like COVID that takes place, no one wants to be the first one to put their hand up.

45:22

Yeah. Right. And so you do. It's easy to think that you're all alone when you're fighting the D .I .E. stuff. It's easy to think you're all alone when you're fighting transgenderism, when you're fighting abortion in the military, when you're fighting pronoun use in the military.

45:33

So part of that training piece, it's also connecting Christians across the military to know, hey, if I'm going to take a stand on this, number one,

45:40

I've been trained appropriately and I'm ready. Yeah. Number two, I've got legal advocacy backing me up. And number three,

45:46

I know I'm not the only one taking a stand. Yeah. No, that's good. So I'm going to one or two more questions here.

45:52

And this is kind of off subject, but we talked about it earlier. But since I have three servicemen here, I kind of want in two lawyers, two attorneys,

45:59

I kind of want to ask the question we we saw the the transgender stuff come out yesterday, he said.

46:07

Why do you believe in your personal opinion? Why are they just inserting so much chaos? Because I mean, just from it, like I said, from a practical aspect of being able to try to run an organization.

46:16

And one day you wake up and you say you have to gender me as ma 'am. And then the next day, sir. And now I need a different uniform and nine.

46:23

I'm sleeping in a different barracks and using a different bathroom. And as if you want your military to be an elite fighting force that defends freedom and does all these things and right that we wanted to do.

46:33

Why are we inserting this chaos that will totally disintegrate an organized unit? What do you think the purpose is there?

46:40

Do you think it's intentional? Do you think it's just. Well, we're just trying to be nice and accommodate people. I mean, I've never really heard military stories where you try to accommodate people, you know what

46:50

I mean? It doesn't seem very accommodating. You break their will and say, no, this is this is the way you're going to do it our way.

46:55

Like what's your personal opinions on that? Just as as people have served in the military and you're seeing what's going on.

47:01

Now, anyone want to we're all looking this way. Go ahead. He wants to say something. I mean, at this point, there is no standard.

47:08

OK, yeah. Adhere to. So it's just we're in freefall, like Toby talked about last night.

47:13

The car off the cliff. So at this point, their rationalization is just to continue going in the direction they're going, just to double down on all the nonsense.

47:23

So they're just trying to create an idealist society like we're in platonic thinking over and over again.

47:28

Yeah. And that's what that's what this causes. Like there's no practical application to it, really. It's just an idealist society being perpetrated and propagated.

47:37

And it's going to it's going to create chaos. But there's got to be officers high up that understand that this is eventually going to weaken our armed forces, all this kind of stuff.

47:47

So I go, so is it purposeful? As you know, we don't want to get into, you know, being conspiracy theorists here. But I go, there's got to be smarter, way smarter guys than me.

47:55

Higher up that are making decisions that go. This can't be good 10 years from now, five years from now. This is you know.

48:00

So why are we doing this? Are we just appeasing a group or what? Well, think of it this way. It has less to do with appeasing a specific group and has more to do with the fact that high level brass in the military are promoted, not based on competence, but based on their adherence to the government policy propaganda.

48:18

OK. OK. The problem becomes what's the most important thing for a one star general? I don't know.

48:24

What is it? Is to get that second star. And it is to get that third star. Right. Right. And so what we what we have a tendency as Americans to do because we love our service members, because we love our men and women in uniform, we want to treat brass in the military like they're different than any other high level government bureaucrat.

48:41

OK. And so if I asked you, hey, why is the FDA making horrible, stupid decisions? Why is, you know, insert alphabet soup agency here?

48:51

Right. Implementing this, there are a bunch of government bureaucrats and they're off after their own self -interest. But suddenly you put a uniform on that guy.

48:57

It's like, oh, it's separate. And you're a different standard. Right. And so part of what you have to be able to do is you have to be able to put

49:05

Christian people in the military working from a worldview commitment that starts before the crisis.

49:11

Right. Right. Those are the people who are going to eventually be able to break the backbone of this, because the chaos that we're seeing now is not sustainable over a long term.

49:21

It's not going to enforce readiness. It's not going to help us win wars. Yeah. No, that's that's so true.

49:27

That's a very good point, though, too. I've done that myself. You see stars on the shoulder, you know, and you all of must be some type of difference.

49:36

And it's like, well, no, bureaucrats are bureaucrats. Right. Self -interest is self -interest, whether you have a uniform on or not. And this is one of the reasons we've been such big supporters of what

49:44

Senator Tuberville is doing right now in Washington. Right. You would do more. You would impact readiness worse if you held up E6 promotions than what he's doing right now, holding up brass level promotions.

49:55

Right. Right. And the fact that you've got someone taking a stand, holding that oversight and even now that conflict is breaking out over the world going, no, you move.

50:05

Right. Secretary Austin, you could end this anytime you wanted to. You move is a huge thing that we haven't seen in a long time.

50:11

Wow. All right. Let's put bookends on this, guys. So what's the final word here? We will make sure we link up Stand With Warriors, the organization.

50:19

We've thrown out the website for anyone listening out there. What kind of advice would you give them, whether in the military or not?

50:27

What do you think? I'm looking at you as a fearless leader. Yeah. No, I mean, I think what we what we need is we need to continue to build community.

50:35

And it starts at your local church. We've bought into the myth of neutrality. We've had theology that leads us to have a defeatist mentality.

50:42

And and that only leads to one outcome, what we're seeing in the world today. So it truly is Christ or chaos. That's how we need to be living our lives.

50:48

So all of us, you know, it's part of what's baked into us from our military services. We need men building their own, you know, their physical fitness, their mental fitness, their spiritual fitness.

50:59

We need men joining together in community and serving in their local community like what you do with the churches you're working in, what you do at the county level.

51:08

That's what we need. We need that same thing in the military. But that's we need that that warrior mindset. We call it

51:13

Stand With Warriors. So you'll see what our emblem looks like. We we make an homage back to, you know, Spartan era men standing there with their shields and it's three shields.

51:22

Why? Because when you when you were fighting in the phalanx and the Greek phalanx, your shield didn't protect you.

51:27

It protected the person standing next to you. But if you went down, it wasn't just you as a guy standing next to you.

51:33

And so that's that's the mentality we want to create. And that's what we need. So it really is about take responsibility for yourself.

51:38

Christian men, be ready to take a stand. If you're not financially fit, if you're not physically fit, you won't be ready to take a stand.

51:44

You won't be able to give up your pension in the military. If you haven't been saving money and figuring this out, you won't be able to walk away from a job if you're not doing the right things.

51:54

And we're not always in that position. But that's the mindset we need to have. We need to have that willingness to say, you know what?

52:00

This position that I have, this this agent, you know, I'm a I'm a federal agent or whatever.

52:05

I'm in the military. I need to be willing to take that off. I mean, Danny was a Navy SEAL. Those guys, I mean, we will never imagine what he went through to do that.

52:14

The sacrifices he made to do that successfully to earn that trident. And ultimately, because of his faith, he said,

52:20

I'm going to put the cross of Christ before that trident and I'm going to do what's right for myself, for my family and for all

52:26

Americans. These Navy SEALs did this because they were afraid what was going to happen to the American public if they didn't take a stand.

52:32

And and it didn't come in one day. You know, Danny didn't wake up one day and become a Navy SEAL. Caleb didn't wake up one day and go to law school and become an

52:41

Army JAG. It was a daily walk and God working in all of the lives. So we can all do that. And we can come together in community and make a difference.

52:48

That's good. I'll tell you what. Just the fact of you saying being financially secure so you can take those risks.

52:54

That's a podcast episode in and of itself, because I've been preaching that for a long time. And as a real estate broker, it is so fulfilling to help people kind of set up financially, whether it's in a real estate investment, rentals, right shopping plaza, stuff like that to where you're not bound by the lender.

53:10

Right. Proverbs says you can borrow money all you want, but you're going to be slave to that lender in whatever way it is.

53:16

That's right. Right. So whoever holds that note, if you're not doing what they say or you can't have the financial freedom to kind of be able to make those godly choices that you need to make.

53:25

I'm so glad that you said that, because we're going to be hitting on that later next month when we have some financial planners on.

53:31

So good stuff. Anything else, guys? Before we wrap up here, we'll let you get to lunch. No. All right, guys.

53:37

Thanks so much for listening. We're going to I think we're going to do lunch. And then the next episode or segment should be

53:43

Michael Foster. He's going to swing by. We're going to talk about why it's good to be a man. All right. Thanks, guys. Well, Michael, Michael Foster.

53:49

Stop by the podcast booth. The Dead Man Walking podcast booth. Good to see you. Good to meet you in person.

53:55

Likewise. Follow online. And I've been following what you're doing. We were saying earlier, I just listened to the audio book earlier this year.

54:02

And it's good to be a man. And that really got some traction. Yeah, it's been doing well.

54:07

It's kind of got a second breath of air recently. I noticed. Yeah. Yeah. When was it first published? What was the date?

54:12

The first published? Oh, was it last year? Was it? OK. Because I was like I felt like I was behind on the

54:20

I don't. By listening in February. It's been such a part of my life. Right.

54:26

Yes. I've been doing it for a long time. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know about a year and a half. Yeah. So I always like to right off the top ask authors this because my wife and I, we go back and forth on this.

54:37

If I listen to an audio book, can I tell people I've read the book or do you have to physically read the book to be able to say you read it?

54:43

I think it depends on the book. OK. So I do both. Yeah, me too. But with technical books,

54:50

I like to read them. Yeah. I think it's good to be a man. It's a book you probably could listen to.

54:56

OK. Yeah. Audio book. It's it's very exhortational. It's very practical. Yeah.

55:01

Some of the later chapters are a little more, you know, I think would suit reading like a textbook.

55:08

But I think it's it's really it's like five hours or something. Six hours. Yeah. I basically listened to the whole thing on the way back from a conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee, back to Michigan.

55:17

So it was the perfect little time on the Canada, a little plug for them. Do appreciate them putting it up there and you having that relationship with them.

55:24

What what was the idea behind it? Was it just the right time to write that type of book and talking about man's role, masculinity, dominion, all those things?

55:32

Or was it something you've been thinking about a long time and just came at that time or what was going on there? I've been writing about sexuality in many ways for 20 years.

55:42

But that particular book was there was issues not being addressed. Yeah. By a lot of ministries and books at the time.

55:50

Now it's kind of interesting, like things have shifted significantly in the last couple of years where the things that we were talking about were kind of like we we caught that wave by accident early on.

56:01

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Which is the whole man is fear, red pill, all that stuff. All these things were kind of niche and fringe.

56:09

But some of the issues they were speaking to at the time were resonating with a lot of young men. I had been a youth pastor over years ago.

56:16

And as they brought it up to me, I looked into it more and wanted to know why they were listening to so many non -Christians and and pagans.

56:23

And what what did Jordan Peterson have that their local pastor didn't? Right. And that that's kind of led up and led me down that road of researching.

56:31

I had this idea for a podcast just like fatherhood or whatever. Yeah. But it ended up turning into it's good to be a man.

56:37

Had a friend at the time who was conversant in the same topics. And I said, well, you want to maybe do something together?

56:44

And I had started. It's good to be a man. Like it had been like three weeks and he jumped on. And that was my co -author, non -tenant.

56:51

Yeah. And so we did 75 episodes of a podcast. Sometimes it was he and I, sometimes it's him, sometimes it's me.

56:57

And then we wrote one hundred and forty newsletters. And nice. And then wrote the book.

57:03

And it seemed like it was what people need. We wrote the book for kind of youngish men.

57:08

Sure. That were waking up to the fact that what the church was selling them on sexuality wasn't true.

57:16

Right. Aspects were. But by and large, there was a lot of lies and half truths and things like that.

57:24

So we wrote for those guys because we didn't want them to get swallowed up by the world. Yeah. So when I was listening to it, I'm 42. So I went, man, first,

57:31

I wish I would have had this in my 20s. Those first few chapters. But then also I'm in a stage of my life to where we have a younger church and I'm in that stage where I'm kind of in between.

57:40

I'm still being mentored and discipled by my elders and older ones. And then you're kind of bringing along those in their teens and 20s when

57:47

I'm at my age. And it was just a nice refresher to going, oh, yeah, that's that's what we are created for.

57:53

That is the, you know, the masculine role. So kudos to that. And most people don't know who's listening.

57:58

You're also a pastor. Yep. You probably saw some of that even maybe within your church. You know,

58:04

Christian guys are believers going towards kind of secular, you know, motivational speakers and things like this.

58:13

We're actually doing that in our church. We have a conference, a one day conference called the Builders Conference. I'm a panel panelist on that.

58:19

And the theme is navigating the manosphere because it's it's kind of like you said, you wrote that wave early, but now it's getting into the highways and byways.

58:27

Just about every church. You know, why should I be taking advice on Exodus from Jordan Peterson? Should I, you know, pull a few things from what's his name,

58:37

Andrew Tate that yes, he's crazy and some stuff, but some of the stuff has a monocle truth in it and it's godly truth.

58:44

He's not might not be espousing that. But can we listen to that and take, you know, glean from that? And you're going to be you're going to be kind of a subject on that as I'm going to kind of be in defense of your book and kind of, you know, that's one that we should be looking at in a biblical sphere.

59:01

So thank you for writing that. But I want to talk to you real quick, too, about Fight Left Feast.

59:06

That's where we're at right now. We're doing some live podcasts from there. And you have a speaker. You're speaking tomorrow, correct?

59:13

I am. And you're going to be one of the sessions. Can you give us just a little sneak peek or maybe for those that, you know, can attend, just don't give everything away.

59:23

But what are you kind of going to be going over in your session? I'm going to talk about dishes and the politics of the home.

59:31

One of the questions that came up a whole lot when I got more in this space was who washes the dishes in our home.

59:40

Right. And I was like, well, I have children, you know, a dishwashing machine. Yeah. So I don't do dishes.

59:46

My wife doesn't do dishes. My kids and my dishwasher does. Right. But it kept coming up over and over again.

59:53

And then as I noticed people bringing it up, I also noticed it came up in a lot of pastors sermons.

59:58

A man, if he really loved his wife, he'd do dishes. I'm like, what is with this preoccupation?

01:00:04

Right. Then I just started reading. I've been I've read the feminist second wave, third wave feminists my entire life.

01:00:12

So I dived into Betty Friedan and and all of them. And then they had all this stuff on dishes.

01:00:17

And it led into this whole topic of how dishes represent the drudgery of a emaciated household.

01:00:26

A household that no longer serves its productive purpose. And it and she feels the curse there.

01:00:33

Right. The curse is on each area of productivity for the sex, for the man. OK, him to engage in the creation mandate.

01:00:40

He's got to bleed. There's going to be thorns and thistles. Right. And there's going to be exhaustion, sweat and brow work for a woman to engage in the creation mandate, at least in the way it's normally talked about, there's being fruitful, multiplying.

01:00:53

And that means having pain and childbearing. You know, each area of productivity has pain with it.

01:00:59

So for a lot of people, things like for a lot of women, dishes represent sort of a pain connected.

01:01:06

For my wife, it's laundry. But, yeah, but it feels dishes. Yeah. And the feminists actually have a point.

01:01:12

Their answers, their solutions are wrong. Right. Like they see the house doesn't matter. You should go be a queer woman. No, actually, we need to return the household to its

01:01:19

God design purpose. Yeah. And so it's going to go on there. And then it'll end with exhortation to not.

01:01:25

I think we're in a real danger of of moving away from physical engagement with matter.

01:01:32

Right. Unpack that a little bit. What do you mean by this? Instead of having sex with a woman, you watch porn. Instead of having friends, you have followers on Twitter, friends on Facebook, which aren't your friends.

01:01:41

Right. Like once a year, I tell everyone on Facebook I'm not their friend. And it hurts a lot of people's emotions.

01:01:47

But I don't know those people. Right. There's like 5000 people. How could I know those people? Yeah. Instead of having churches, we listen to podcasts and listen to content.

01:01:55

We don't actually get involved. We're living in an age where the ability to divorce yourself from the physical realm is is easier than ever before.

01:02:05

So I think of a sensory deprivation sort of thing. So but when you get stuck in that, you can't see anything.

01:02:16

You can't hear anything. Right. Right. But what it's like in our society, we're being stuck in one. But all you can do is see and hear. And it's all this content being constantly fed to them.

01:02:24

Yeah. Right. And this content that makes you feel like you're doing something. Right. Because like a lot of people like to announce that they're losing weight.

01:02:31

Right. Because it feels good to announce that like you're actually doing something. Yeah. But it doesn't actually satisfy.

01:02:38

Like you're not actually accomplishing anything. Right. Like and so people like they like to read because they feel like they're participating.

01:02:46

Yeah. You actually have to digest that stuff out and go out and do something. Right. And so that's a real danger in an age like ours.

01:02:54

Of like removing yourself from actually engaging the world and reform Christianity, which is kind of our niche to some degree.

01:03:02

Yeah. It's especially bad. They're disembodied brains that don't interact with the physical world.

01:03:08

And that's why a lot of young men don't respect them. They respect a guy like Tate, who is a kickboxing champion, or they respect guys that have like actual skin in the game in the real world.

01:03:18

Yeah. I've noticed, too, they're not actually out doing anything. They're listening and just parroting.

01:03:25

And then, like you're saying, it gives them that feeling of, well, I'm on that team. He's doing something. I'm living vicariously through him actually accomplishing or those people.

01:03:33

Another point you made, which is just great. And I never really thought about it this way. But how often do we hear we're the most connected generation ever?

01:03:40

Connected, connected. And we're actually you just made a point where the opposite we're probably the most disconnected.

01:03:45

We've separated ourselves through intimacy, like you said, porn and sex and then video games and everything is separated.

01:03:53

So we're we're running the risk of being the most disconnected in an age of technology. If you leave a phone on a table, people are less apt to open up because it's rude because anytime it can be interrupted.

01:04:04

So you don't want to go too deep. Yeah. Good book by Sherry Turkle called Reclaiming Conversation. Yeah, it's a very difficult time to have real community.

01:04:13

It's a very difficult time to have real intimacy and to build real things. And the reform world right now, everyone's got a podcast.

01:04:20

I know we're online, but everyone has one. Right. And then it's fine to talk about things.

01:04:26

It's fine to use online to kind of a way to set up a flare flare and gather a group.

01:04:32

Sure. At some point, you have to build real things. Absolutely. Some point you have to get engaged in the world.

01:04:38

So that's that's what I'm going to talk about. Very cool. All right. As we put bookends on this, if a young man's out there listening right now or any man, and I'm probably eighty nine to ninety one percent male.

01:04:50

OK, that's our demo. So we're talking to the right guy. What's what's something as we move into the future in this kind of this new world, this new age?

01:05:01

What's the most important advice you could give to a young guy or even a middle aged guy like me?

01:05:07

Just generally at the 30000 foot view, what's something that you would tell them that maybe they haven't been told or maybe been told or just not think is important, but it actually is?

01:05:17

Yeah, I think probably if you can't master your emotions and your spirit, you're not not going to go far in life.

01:05:24

Yeah. And there's a reason things like prudence and temperance are emphasized as leadership qualities in Scripture.

01:05:31

Yeah. And what I noticed, a lot of young men do not have control over their anger, over their emotions. And you see that in a lot of older guys.

01:05:39

You want to lead other people. Whoever is the coolest head is who's in charge. Yeah. Right.

01:05:44

And learning to actually master your spirit, master your emotions. Yeah, it's huge. And that's why there's something like stoicism has has appeal to men because as they go through life, they realize, man, if I had kept my cool,

01:05:57

I wouldn't ruin that. Yeah. You are the one that sets the temperature of a room, especially when you're married. If you don't like if your kids are acting out, if you're if you're having trouble with your wife following your lead, always start where you have the most control, which is with yourself.

01:06:13

Yeah. She may just be a rebel, right? They may just be difficult kids. But a lot of times when you take mastery over yourself, there's a lot of benefits.

01:06:21

It's easy to submit to someone that's excellent, easier to submit. Yeah. And so I'd say pursue excellence, pursue that inner solid emotional life that also make you call out to God more because you won't think about sin merely as behavior, but as your overall attitude and spirit and we look at life.

01:06:38

That's where I would. Yeah, no, that's good. I've actually heard meekness is what tempered dangerous, basically being able strength under control, strength under control.

01:06:47

When you think about gentleness, even as if if you take a bag of potatoes and you throw it into the back of your van, you were gentle with those potatoes.

01:06:55

If you take a like a lamp or something and throw it in a break, you want to gentle.

01:07:01

So gentleness is all about appropriate application of strength. I like that. Right. Yeah. Mm hmm.

01:07:07

Yeah. So anyway. Yeah. For those of you watching, we have some people walking through the camera. That's OK. That's what you get when you come to one of these conferences.

01:07:15

Michael, thanks so much for stopping by. We're going to let you get to your coffee break, throw out to the people. We'll make sure we link it up where where they can find you or what you got going on right now or any books or anything.

01:07:25

I'm writing a book called Surviving the Death of a Child. OK, it's on how to deal with stillbirths and miscarriages and all that.

01:07:33

And then much needed. Yeah. Thank you. And then I'm just on Twitter a lot.

01:07:39

This is Foster. Yeah, we've got we made people's a podcast. My wife and I are doing and we'll get back around to that.

01:07:48

We got the first four episodes out and then then we had a tragedy. Our family has sidelined us. We're getting back to that right now.

01:07:55

But yeah, it's just really on Twitter's where you'll find whatever. All right. There you go, guys. Michael Foster, thank you so much for being here.

01:08:02

Thanks for listening to another clip, guys. And we'll be back with more. I think we have Ben Merkel on later today.

01:08:07

So that'll be the next one up. Thanks, guys. God bless. God bless. Take care. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Dead Men Walking Podcast for full video podcast episodes and clips or email us at dead men walking podcast at gmail dot com.