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Okay. Well, I am joined here by Carmen. I don't know if many of you saw this or listened to the podcast, but I was actually on Carmen's podcast called

00:10

No Apologies, which is a Stasios podcast, which I'll have Carmen explain in just a minute.

00:16

But I just wanted to welcome you to the show, Carmen. Welcome. Thanks so much, A .B. It's really fun to be in your realm.

00:24

Thank you for coming into mine a few months ago. Has it already been months since we did that? Yeah, it was months ago.

00:29

And to be honest, I don't even remember exactly what we talked about, but I'm sure it was great. It was really great.

00:35

We talked about, but mainly we did, you know, what you're kind of an expert in. We talked about social justice infiltrating the church.

00:42

We talked about how we both liked the song Be Prepared from the

00:48

Lion King. That's basically a communist manifesto. We talked about Tim Keller a little.

00:58

I've since then wrote an open letter to Tim Keller about some of his weird stuff that he's doing.

01:05

You know, he had that viral Facebook post about like people are being too eyesing on both sides.

01:14

Well, that's so funny, Carmen, because if I remember that conversation, you were a little bit surprised to hear me mention Keller, but I'm sure that you're no longer surprised.

01:23

Yeah, yeah. No, I knew he was a little, like he has said things before that I'm like, but you really did open my eyes to like, oh no, it's a little worse than I thought.

01:34

Yeah, no, definitely. I think you're definitely not alone in that. I think the last few months have been pretty, well, you might say we have 20 -20 vision now.

01:44

It's been disappointing. And now the stuff with Piper, that was also kind of a drag.

01:51

So maybe we can come back and talk about that sometime. Yeah, maybe. But no, you reached out to me and I was definitely glad to do another video with you because, you know,

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I've taken a look at some of your materials with Stasios and then you've told me a little bit about what you're trying to accomplish.

02:07

And so I'm definitely glad to, you know, promote what you guys are doing. So why don't you just tell us a little bit, what is

02:13

Stasios? First of all, what does that even mean? Sure. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for giving me the chance to do this.

02:19

I think our audiences are similar and interested in similar things. So I'm hoping

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Stasios can really kind of encourage them, challenge them, be a resource for them. So Stasios, what it means, how we picked the name is it's actually a

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Greek word for rebellion or dissent or uproar.

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So kind of what we took that to mean is there's been a general, there's been some trends in the evangelical church for a while now, and they need to be shook up.

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There needs to be a little bit of dissent and there needs to be a little bit of uproar over some of the things that have been allowed to kind of infiltrate, whether that's social justice stuff, just a really, and obviously we're talking about social justice in the form that in no way resembles biblical justice, just a super kind of intense form of passivity that's really infected a lot of churches where they feel like they cannot contend with cultural issues in any way.

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That's kind of how the name Stasios came about. And we have written content, we have our podcast, and we are launching a

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YouTube channel tonight. And so what we aim to do in all of that is provide answers for curious

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Christians from an unapologetic biblical point of view. We do that in a conversational way, but we're also,

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I would say we have a lot of intellectual content. We're trying to bring that intellectualism back into the way

03:52

Christians converse about culture. And we have fun too, kind of conversational, funny, just be that sort of place where I think a lot of Christians are hungry to find the truth in a way that is fun to engage with.

04:07

So you keep saying we, so are you using the royal we or are there other people involved? Yes, yes.

04:13

So it's myself and my co -editor Ian Hewitt. And we are a fun duo because I am a writer, and Ian is a lawyer.

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We bring kind of different expertise to Stasios. And then within that, we have, the team is slowly growing.

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One of our regular contributors is John Brannion, who is a viral Christian comedian.

04:39

So he kind of injects a lot of humor and satire into the site. And we've just got a great handful of contributors and editors and meme lords and all kinds of good stuff.

04:50

Good. Well, it sounds like you've got the whole army there, you know? Everything you need. Well, and kind of a funny story about how

04:57

Ian and I kind of this worked is Ian and I went to K -State together. We're both K -Staters.

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We were getting our degrees eight years ago, I think now. And Ian was already pretty boldly putting out content that really challenged like mainstream type narratives.

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Ian was already kind of trying to get Christians to think and speak up about things that were important.

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And he knew me and he knew I was a Christian too. And he like asked me to write for the college newspaper.

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And I was too much of a chicken back then. I was like, no, I don't want to. I could like, you know, I could get in trouble.

05:34

And so it's kind of funny, like seven years later, we sort of reconnected and now that's what we do.

05:40

We put out bold Christian content. I finally came around. Excellent.

05:46

Excellent. Okay, cool. So let me, let's give everyone an example of the kind of thing that you would tackle and how you would tackle it.

05:55

Why don't you tell me like, you know, what are you all interested in and what kinds of topics can they expect to hear about on Staceos?

06:03

Yeah, good question. We have quite a few different things. One of our most popular was

06:09

Ian did a really thorough deep dive into some of the things that Jordan Peterson has said to show that Jordan Peterson is a valuable voice, but he's not a

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Christian voice. And a lot of people kind of try to suggest that he is. And so just sort of like a cultural analysis of Jordan Peterson.

06:30

I've done some stuff. I have an open letter to Christianity Today, where I basically call them out for being ridiculous and writing just stuff that sometimes is like, how is this any different than what someone could read in like the

06:44

New York Times? What is Christian about this? CNN, MSNBC, all that. Right, exactly. We have a new one on Amy Coney Barrett about how feminism is clearly not about fairness, just in the way people have been treating her.

06:57

We can see that. And probably one that's our most important thing that's coming out tonight on the

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YouTube channel is because Ian is a lawyer, he's really interested in the Supreme Court.

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He's one of the few that really watches that, considers the implications of what's happening, really pays attention to the different cases.

07:17

And so Ian is, what we're really trying to do now before the election is help Christians understand what's at stake.

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And we are probably taking a slightly different approach than a lot of other places. Because of Ian's legal background, he recognizes that the issue of court packing, most conservatives and most

07:34

Christians do not understand just how severely bad it would be if Democrats got the presidency and the

07:44

Senate and were able to pack the court. So we're trying to really educate people on all kinds of different fronts.

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But that one is going to be very important for people to understand going forward. So yeah, that's an interesting one.

07:56

Because right before this, right before we started recording, I asked you about what that was. Because I think a lot of people, because here's the thing,

08:03

I often get accused of being anti -intellectual, but it's really not the case.

08:09

I talk about politics and I talk about some of this stuff, but everything I do is kind of at the street level, you know what

08:14

I mean? So certain things I'll research a lot more, like social justice, I'll research a lot more.

08:20

But stuff like court packing, I know a little bit about what that is, but I don't really know exactly what it is.

08:29

So something like that, just give us, why does that matter so much? You don't have to give it all away because you have an episode coming out.

08:35

So give us a little teaser. Yeah, no, definitely. Ian will be proud of me. I'm going to do his work proud here.

08:41

So essentially what's happening is, yeah, right? I know he's going to be like, you said it wrong.

08:47

No. So we have three branches of government for a reason, because they could check each other, right?

08:53

We need them. We need each one to keep the other one in check. And essentially, if the Democrats pack the

08:59

Supreme Court, we lose that mechanism to check the other branches. And so what it would look like essentially is, they will stack the court with more justices, and it's just going to be a way for them to easily ram through whatever they want.

09:16

It's the end of the First Amendment, and it's the end of the Second Amendment. I mean, there's nothing stopping them doing that if there's no other mechanism to say that's unconstitutional.

09:28

You know, that's how the Supreme Court is supposed to function. It's supposed to say what's coming from the legislature is constitutional.

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What's coming from the presidency is constitutional. And so if that becomes a obsolete, you know, partisan thing, then there's nothing there to stop them from eliminating whatever they want.

09:49

And Democrats have been pretty straightforward about the fact that they are planning on doing it. Like, they will stack the court.

09:57

Right. So in other words, they're just going to continue to nominate more and more and more justices until they can just have complete control over what happens at the

10:06

Supreme Court. Right. And it's different now because a few people have started to wake up to the court packing scheme.

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Democrats are kind of doing their little Orwell thing where they change the definition of court packing. And they're saying, oh, well, what

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Trump is doing is court packing. He's putting he's putting his justices on the court, court packing.

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That's the process when you're the president and the Senate can confirm the judges, then it's not court packing.

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But if you come in there and you say, OK, we're adding four more judges and they're all going to be, you know, progressives, then you know exactly what's going to happen.

10:42

We'll never be able to get that power back. We'll never be able to. I mean, we might, but it's not going to be easy.

10:50

Like there's no there's no civil, easy way to do it at that point, because I mean, now they can just determine what's constitutional and what's not on a whim.

11:01

Well, I always found that interesting because like like conservatives have this idea that if they like if they if they nominate judges that believe conservative things, that's wrong.

11:12

But if they but but liberals don't have that idea. Yeah. Right. And it's like conservative judges.

11:19

All you have to do is look at conservative judges. They're not that conservative. They go by the Constitution.

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So oftentimes they're not ruling in the way that conservatives want them to rule, because sometimes that's not what's constitutional.

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Like Roberts, Roberts and Chief Justice Roberts annoys everybody frequently because he sometimes sides with the liberals.

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Progressives don't do that. Like, right, right. Ideologues in there. I mean, it's that's why we're really we we have another podcast to called

11:48

Donald Trump is not a Christian, where we go into a podcast episode. Sorry, that's not its own separate podcast.

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But we just get into a podcast called that would be the most boring podcast ever.

12:01

We just like examine everything he says all the time. No, but that's an episode we have where we just talk about like Donald Trump isn't a

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Christian. He's not like we just know he's not based off of things that he said. I'm not like right claiming secret knowledge into Donald Trump's heart that his behavior, his beliefs.

12:19

You know, yes, yeah, get it. He's he's he's a collegian if you want to get like really into it.

12:24

He has a very commonly wrong belief about sin and grace. But all that aside, he is at least sympathetic to the

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Christian cause. And he is at least not hostile. And he's at least more, more conducive to Americans keeping their rights.

12:45

So that's why we're really we endorse him. We're we've tried to inform people why that's the best route in 2020.

12:51

Well, I know that this word has a negative connotation to it. But I like to use it because I often like to embrace what someone intends as an insult as something

13:00

I can own. But like they would say he panders to Christians and Christian beliefs. He definitely does do that.

13:06

But I much prefer someone who panders to Christians than to someone who panders to people that are completely insane.

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Like I'd rather someone pander to a Christian than pander to like the AOC wing of the

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Democratic Party. You know what I mean? There's no there's no equivalence there whatsoever, right? Right.

13:24

Well, and it's not like I mean, yeah, he's not a Christian. And he doesn't necessarily, you know, he doesn't embody

13:30

Christian virtues. But at the very least, he has done things that have been helpful for causes that Christians care about.

13:37

And I just I'm honestly kind of annoyed that we're still, you know, with with the whole john type thing that just happened.

13:43

I'm just annoyed that we're still kind of like pretending like, we don't know what to do. Like it's not ideal by any stretch of the imagination.

13:52

But we know, as Christians, what we should do to preserve the

13:57

United States of America a little bit longer. One of the things that you said earlier, and sorry to interrupt you there, but I just wanted to make sure while I was thinking about this, we're talking about Trump right now.

14:08

And one of the things I really enjoy about Trump is that he understands that, that, you know,

14:15

Twitter posts, memes, things like that are important. And you mentioned that with your team, you've got a comedian that that that helps you guys out, you've got the intellectuals, you've got the lawyer, and you've got meme lords and stuff like that.

14:31

Why is that so important? What like that? To some people, that's kind of like a dirty game. And it's just like kid stuff.

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In fact, I was insulted just recently for being for making stupid videos. We're grown adults, and you're making stupid videos, which is true.

14:43

I'm guilty of that. But why is it important, though? Well, you know, obviously, part of it's important is, that's just what a lot that's a medium that a lot of people like, like, you know, regardless of, you know,

14:56

I mean, I personally, I think memes are awesome. Like I like, I like, of course, memes,

15:02

I like dad humor memes, I like boober memes, like I they make me laugh. So it's, it's just something that's entertaining.

15:09

But the, the hard thing that we're dealing with in our postmodern technological world is people's attention spans are just small.

15:20

And a lot of people do not really, they think they have the ability to research, but they just really don't know how to do it.

15:27

Or they're not looking, they're not considering, you know, all sides, there's just a lot of them, over saturation of one type of narrative.

15:35

And memes are just a really effective way to kind of just jolt in someone's brain, make them think, you know, they're essentially little tiny stories or little jokes.

15:46

And those are just effective ways of communicating. So I don't think, I don't think people should feel like they're too good for memes.

15:53

They're in a world where you have so much content you could consume. It makes sense that it's, it's kind of refreshing and effective to just kind of like look at an image, understand something and go from there.

16:08

Right, right. I could do a 20 minute video explaining my argument case point by point, or I can post a well -known meme where everyone knows exactly what it means.

16:16

And a couple of words and it's all set. Yeah. Yeah. And I think memes change minds sometimes.

16:22

They totally do. Well, this is, this is the thing, like, like I, my, my opinion on, on stuff like this is that you can always tell what your opponent thinks is an effective strategy by what they attack is illegitimate.

16:33

And I think that oftentimes more progressively minded people will, will try to attack memes and videos and stuff like that and say it's somehow un -Christian or illegitimate.

16:46

And it's, I think it's just because it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I, what

16:52

I love, no, no, you, you go ahead and I'll, I'll remember this, I think. Okay. I was just going to say, I know, um, through StaceyOs, we know a huge network of meme lords.

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They don't all work for StaceyOs, but there's just tons. You may be seeing, like, there's, like, appalling memes for apostolic teens.

17:09

There's, like, reformed memes for your mollycoddled, molly, what is it, mollycoddled feelings, like all these goofy, long names.

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But all they do is, like, produce awesome Christian memes that generally effectively cut through a lot of progressive malarkey, to borrow a word.

17:28

That's, that's, that's just it. It cuts right through, you know what I mean? It cuts right through all the nonsense. And I, I, I oftentimes when you play, so, so here's what

17:35

I'll say too, because I've also recently been accused of saying that you don't need the intellectual side of arguments.

17:41

I've, I've never ever said that. I don't believe that. I think you need that too, but you need both because oftentimes the way, the way sort of the intellectual arguments happen is the way people use language can be dicey because you can make an argument about how racism's bad and you're using the word racism, but then somebody can come and write a very intellectual article about racism that it's using a completely wrong definition and it can muddle everything up.

18:07

And I think that memes can cut through some of the nonsense. You need the intellectual stuff. You need the lawyers. You need all of that.

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But there's no reason to not have every tool in your arsenal. So a good, a good meme

18:19

Lord is very valuable. He probably can't win the fight on his own, but, but, um, but it's a legitimate, you know, battlefield,

18:28

I think. Absolutely. Absolutely. I always say memes are a ministry. Don't you let anyone tell you otherwise.

18:35

That's good stuff, man. That's good. All right, cool. Well, we've been talking for like 20 minutes. Um, is there anything that you want the, the people on my channel to know about your, about your new channel that's coming up today, tonight and anything else that you, you, you all are up to?

18:49

You know, just, just what, what every, every aspiring

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YouTube channel person wants. Please go check it out. Please subscribe. Please like, you probably know better what they should do.

19:01

I don't even know. I'm, this is, I'm a noob. Like it, share it. Let me tell you something, Carmen. I, I, I listen,

19:08

I want to help you out cause I think that your stuff is really cool, but, um, I don't really know what to do with YouTube.

19:15

Everything I've done, it's been accidental, but actually I have some recommendations. I'll give you some that have worked for me, but, um, but yeah, go to the, go, go to the channel, subscribe, like, comment, all those things.

19:30

I know those are good things. Yeah. Share, go to Stasios, go to www .stasios

19:36

.net spelled S T A S E O S. Check out me and A .D.'s conversation.

19:41

That was called Talking Justice with A .D. Roadless. I'll put it in the link to this description, which is something

19:46

I, I always say I'll do in my videos, but I never do. That's another tip. When you say you're going to link something in the description, actually do it.

19:55

Follow through. Good to know. I'm learning so much. I'm going to take all this knowledge.

20:02

Um, others. Yeah. Other things to have on your radar, you know, you can follow us on Facebook. We're pretty active on Facebook.

20:08

You can follow me on Instagram. I'm Carmen Shover. My last name is S C H O B E R.

20:13

A lot of people get that wrong. Um, and always, oh yeah, we're going to very soon have some awesome merch.

20:21

So keep that, I don't want to spoil it, but I will say one is going to be a sweet design of Amy Coney Barrett.

20:28

So if you've wanted something along those lines, then we will, Stasios will be supplying that. Got it.

20:34

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining me. And, uh, this was really fun and go check out their YouTube channel.

20:39

I will, I will put it in the description. I'll catch me. This is the thing. Yeah, exactly.

20:44

If you catch me, you just messaged me. Okay. I will. Thanks so much for having me on ad always fun to see you.