116. Marcus Pittman Interview | A Practical Postmillennialism Series

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SUMMARY: In this episode, Kendall Lankford interviews Marcus Pittman, co-founder of the streaming service Lore, about the impact of post-millennialism on art and culture. They discuss the importance of art in the kingdom of God and how it can be used to spread the gospel and bring about cultural transformation. Marcus shares his journey to post-millennialism and the inspiration behind Lore, which aims to fund and distribute Christian art that is often neglected by mainstream platforms. They also explore the decline of Christian art and the need for a new approach to funding and distributing art in the church. This conversation explores the importance of pushing boundaries and embracing new ideas in the world of media and entertainment. It highlights the power of non-Hollywood productions and the value of owning intellectual property. The story of losing the rights to Chronicles of Narnia serves as a cautionary tale, emphasizing the need to love your neighbor by giving artists ownership. The conversation also delves into the historical connection between Christianity and technological advancements, encouraging Christians to think outside the box and pursue post-millennial ventures. It concludes with a call to action, urging individuals to take risks and make a difference for Christ in various industries. KEY TAKEAWAYS Post-millennialism fuels optimism and boldness in the kingdom of God, leading to creative endeavors and cultural transformation. Art plays a crucial role in the kingdom of God, as seen in the artistic work of Adam and Eve in the garden and the importance of art in the construction of the temple. The decline of Christian art can be attributed to a lack of funding, distribution channels, and courage to create and support art that reaches a wider audience. Cultural revolution and revival often begin with the younger generation, and it is important to create art that appeals to and engages with younger audiences. Pushing boundaries and embracing new ideas can lead to the discovery of new audiences and the success of non-Hollywood productions. Owning intellectual property is crucial for artists to have long-term control and benefit from their work. Christians have a responsibility to love their neighbor by giving artists ownership and not taking away their labor. Christians should think outside the box and pursue post-millennial ventures in various industries, including technology and space exploration. Taking risks and being creative in business and the arts can make a significant impact for Christ and bring the gospel to new audiences. CHAPTERS 00:00 - Introduction and Background 03:02 - Lore: A New Approach to Funding Art 08:40 - Post-Millennialism and Marcus' Journey 10:59 - The Impact of Post-Millennialism on Art 15:15 - The Importance of Art in History 20:31 - The Decline of Christian Art and Distribution Channels 30:00 - The Influence of Dispensationalism on Art 37:28 - Art and the Reformation 41:01 - The Need for Cultural Revolution and Courage in Art 43:56 - Pushing Boundaries and Finding New Audiences 44:22 - The Power of Non-Hollywood Productions 45:19 - The Importance of Taking Risks and Embracing New Ideas 46:46 - The Value of Owning Intellectual Property 47:44 - The Story of Losing the Rights to Chronicles of Narnia 49:44 - Loving Your Neighbor by Giving Artists Ownership 52:23 - The Need for Christians to Innovate in Various Industries 53:12 - Getting Involved in Reclaiming the Arts 56:21 - The Historical Connection Between Christianity and Technological Advancements 01:00:30 - Thinking Outside the Box and Pursuing Post-Millennial Ventures 01:03:52 - Recovering a Spirit of Creativity and Curiosity 01:05:03 - Investing in Risk and Overcoming Cowardice 01:06:21 - Taking Action and Making a Difference for Christ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/datprodcast/support [https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/datprodcast/support]

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117: Postmillennial Fan Fiction (Part 2 of Marcus Pittman Interview)

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that you would have a precedent. The first message, the first telegraph message was what have God wrought, right?
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So it was just like, you just have all these scientific advancements throughout all of history that just continue to move forward only as a result of Christianity.
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Hello everyone. And welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode one 16 and interview with Marcus Well, hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the broadcast.
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This is a special episode because we're going to be talking to today, a brand new friend of mine, somebody I just met, somebody who's doing great things in the kingdom of God.
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And that's really what we've been hoping for is to hear from men, hear from different people who are taking the post -millennial truths and they're putting them to work on the ground and actually doing things in the kingdom.
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And it's, and it's sort of the argument or the contention of this series that when you have an optimistic eschatology, then it will fuel you to do bold, creative things in the kingdom of God.
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It'll actually fuel you to take risks and to do things, to try to take back culture that was lost.
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And, and as we'll get into today, we're going to be talking about the art. So I want to welcome today, a special guest,
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Marcus Pittman, Marcus, say hello to everyone who listens to the broadcast. How's it going? Everybody.
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Great. Good to be here. Yeah, man. I'm so glad you're here. Uh, just a little bit about Marcus. And then brother,
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I'd love for you to tell it yourself as well. You've done some incredible documentaries that I've been able to watch.
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Uh, I think probably the one that, that resonates with me the most is, is the two part that you did in 2017, 2019, the babies are murdered here.
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Babies are still murdered here. Uh, I remember when that came out, how the internet like tried to shut you guys down and you could only watch it with a
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VPN for like several hours, which was crazy. It lets me know you're doing. I don't know if I've heard those stories, uh, but we, uh, it was nuts.
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Yeah. Oh yeah. The first one I think was probably 2013. It was a lot earlier. It was before I came to Apologia. Oh wow.
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2014 maybe. And then, uh, uh, Jeff Durbin saw that movie.
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It changed his life. I spoke at a conference there and, uh, we decided to start building
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Apologia studios and, uh, did that, um, till about 2018.
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And then I got a job as head of advertising, leading advertising for the agency that did
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Pureflix ads and just got really fed up with Christian movies because of how bad they were.
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And, uh, so then went and told Jeff, I was like, I should make a sequel to babies are murdered here.
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So I quit that job and just did babies are murdered here. Babies are still murdered here. It's been a year making that.
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We put it up on Amazon prime and then Amazon prime deleted it. And that's when
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I was like, we got to fix this Christian media problem that either gives us really bad movies or won't let us distribute the good ones, uh, anywhere else.
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Um, and so that's really how Laura started. Well, I was going to say, you're also co -founder of a streaming service, right?
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Sort of like that. Tell me about it. It's called. Yeah. So it's L O O R uh,
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L O O R .tv is the website. Um, and you can go there and basically, basically what it does is it combines
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Kickstarter and Netflix together, um, and allows the community to come together and to subscribe and, uh, actually spend your monthly subscription on content on funding artists and stuff, as opposed to right now, the way it works is you, you spend your monthly subscription to Netflix or HBO or whatever.
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And, uh, you know, the, your, you don't have any say with what kind of movies they make with your money.
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Um, and so we wanted to put a stop to that. And that's basically how we came up with Laura, um, which is sort of crowdfunding, but it's not in the sec sense of the term.
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Uh, we just use video game currency. You know, we just allocate your money, uh, every week to what we call loot.
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And then you get to spend that loot every week funding movies and TV shows and projects and the content.
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Um, and yeah, we launched in June of last year and been going for about eight months now and funded 40 different pieces of content.
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Um, and, uh, we're just slowly prodding away,
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I guess you could say, uh, on a post millennial timescale, just building up one piece of content at a time, faithful subscribers who really see the vision.
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And you know, the ones that have been there the longest I've seen when we started, we had nothing and now we have 40 pieces of content.
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So they see it working. And we like to say it's every subscriber that funds content today is leaving an inheritance for subscribers in the future.
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When they join, there'll be more content for them to watch with their families. Oh, that is incredible. Uh, what are some of the shows you guys have on there right now?
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And maybe, maybe someone hasn't heard of it before. So we would encourage you to go to lure .tv check it out.
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But, uh, what are some shows you've got currently? Yeah. So, um, right now we're funding for a show.
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We're funding for a bunch of shows, but three of the ones that come to mind are breaking laws, which is, uh, uh, basically like a reality show where, uh,
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Joseph Granda, who's comedian goes and travels the country and breaks like the most ridiculous laws you can find on the books.
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Like, you know, it's illegal to give your wife 50 pounds of chocolate and then, you know, he'll give his wife 50 pounds of chocolate, film him doing that and then turn himself into the police.
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Um, and you know, and ask pastors, you know, was I violating Romans 13 in doing that?
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And so that's a fun, let's like dirty jobs meets legal theory. That's absolutely incredible.
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Yeah. And then, uh, and then, uh, uh, so that show is, uh, funding the first pilot episode is doing pretty good right now.
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And then, uh, we funded an episode of what it's called barely biblical and it's animated teddy bears reenacting the most violent old
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Testament Bible stories. So it's a cartoon show. I've watched this one. I basically like an insanely theological, accurate interpretation of veggie tales, but with teddy bears.
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Um, yeah. So, you know, the violence, all the blood is stuffing and circumcision is whether or not the bears have a nip in their tag or not, you know, so like everything's included, all the gory details, um, of the old
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Testament are an animated cartoon form and it doesn't take itself too seriously. Like, uh,
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I think veggie tales did. Um, and, and, uh, this is, you know, it knows it's not an accurate interpretation of the telling of scripture, but it's just, you know, it's just a fun way of present.
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Really the point of it is the guy who made it as a Disney animator. And he said, I just want to show me and my son can watch, uh, that I can help, that can help explain to him some of the truth, the gory truths of the
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Bible. Um, and you know, everybody rejected that, right? Nobody, none of the
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Christian streaming companies wanted a violent, anything. Um, and so, uh, he came to us with it on a napkin and we were like, we want it.
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What do we have to do to get it? And, uh, it was awesome. Yeah. One of the best ideas we've heard. And then our other really popular show right now is a show called
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Florida Lee, which is about, uh, it's about a wife and her friend trying to figure out ways to make money.
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So her husband, uh, doesn't have to work at the factory all day. So it's, it's locate, they're locate, they live in the
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Bayou and, uh, it's, uh, New Orleans, like French New Orleans style and, uh, really fun, short, um, animated short cartoon.
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Uh, but it's just funny cause you know, usually in sitcoms you have the dumb sitcom dad, right.
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Um, who is not a good leader. Um, but they kind of make fun of it with this because every time you see the, the dad, he's asleep on the couch cause he works so much and he's tired.
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So he doesn't have any talking roles. He's just always sleeping all the day. Uh, so really fun, like really fun show, really low budget.
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We're really just trying to like, we're really trying to be an incubator for new artists, uh, to be able to like build a name and audience for themselves.
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That's outside of the Christian rom -com female demographic that we've, we've haven't had masculine content before in the
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Christian space ever. Um, so this is, it's kind of revolutionary in that sense. You know, I just want to ask so many questions about this, but before we get there, maybe we should ask some foundational questions.
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Um, this is a series on post -millennialism and, and from everything I know of you, you're post -millennial.
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So brother, how did you get there? And then we'll talk about it in a moment. Facebook said I'm like post -millennial fan fiction.
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That's how, that's how post -millennial I am. And I took that as a compliment. I don't think he was complimenting me, but I, I took it as a compliment because who doesn't like fan fiction?
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Yeah, no, I am. I am post mill. Um, Bonson's book victory in Jesus was the one that brought me there.
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Isaiah 65 and believing that we'll live to be 900 years in age again.
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And like that sort of stuff. So I take a super science fiction view of post -mill, uh, stuff sometimes.
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But, uh, it's, it's, I blame it on Bonson. By the way. Excellent book. It's only like five chapters.
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Um, maybe a little more than a hundred pages, but it's excellent. Yeah. I think, I think the breakdown of Isaiah 65 was really what got me because it was possible to argue
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Isaiah 65 when you have death and justice still being enacted and in the new heavens and new earth at the same time, there wasn't really an explanation among any other eschatologies that could properly account for that.
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Yeah. Well, what is post -millennialism? Uh, I know you've got your brand of fan fiction, post -millennialism, which
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I've never heard before. So that's incredible. Uh, what, what is post -millennialism for the average person? Maybe this is the first time they're watching the show.
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Yeah, no, I mean, well, post -millennialism is just that the gospel is going to go out, uh, um, it's going to go forth into all the world and conquer all the nations and, and Christianity will be the most abundant, uh, main, uh, theological system used to run governments and science and technology and arts and, uh, prior to Christ returning again.
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So that's, that's the easiest way. Yeah. So you just said it right there.
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That's, there's an overlap in this doesn't just impact my Sunday morning.
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This does, this, this doesn't just impact the way that I think about the world spiritually. It's going to have physical impact.
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And you mentioned just there, it's going to have an impact in the arts. So how does that work?
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How, how does this nerdy theological doctrine that most people can't pronounce, how does it actually impact how we do art?
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Cause that's fascinating connection. Yeah. Well, I can go really deep with this, but I'll, I'll, I'll say that.
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I think the primary work of Adam and Eve in the garden was artistic work.
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Their first job was they were given was to name the animals. Their job was to garden the garden, right.
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Um, to beautify the garden. You know, like, I, I like to say, you know, man was very good, but the garden still had some gardening to do.
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Right. So, so, um, uh, so that, that is, uh, that, that's, that's primarily,
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I think is their focus. They weren't put in a forest. Uh, they were put in a garden that was, that means it was already maintained and beautiful when they got it and they were to upkeep it and, uh, you know, landscape it.
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And then they failed in that. Obviously they, they did what they weren't supposed to do. Sin came into the world and made everything insanely more difficult.
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And, uh, and, and, and, uh, you know, and then, but when you look in scripture, you know, in, in the garden of Eden, there were jewels that washed into the, into the garden.
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Um, those same jewels are the jewels, um, and, and minerals that are used, uh, in the construction of the temple in the throne room and the
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Holy of Holies. Um, and then in revelation, you see those same jewels again, um, around the throne of God, right.
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In revelation. So, so, so you see this sort of repeating instance of these artistic like God, if God is going to dwell, he dwells among beauty.
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Um, and so there's this artistic expectation that I think as the gospel goes forth, so will the work of art, uh, as we expand out.
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And we've just, so, I mean, I, I mean, I post on Facebook, you can see, man, people just refer to art as I idle work.
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Um, they, they call it, uh, uh, you know, lazy, you know, if you're going to look at art, you're, you're not laboring, you're wasting time.
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We just have such a weird, almost Gnostic view of art. Um, that's dangerous and not at all in accordance with scripture, especially if you read like Exodus 35 at the construction of the temple and what
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God requires of all the artists that are working in the temple. You know, you have a bezel on Holy ab, uh, were the ones that were given all wisdom and knowledge and spirit to be able to teach people how to do all sorts of things.
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Um, and then, you know, the number one requirement for all the artists, uh, to come and do something in the temple was an open call.
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Like, you know, we saw that in Hollywood, they call it, you know, a cat open casting call. Um, but the requirement was skilled.
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Um, so it wasn't just anybody just, you know, doing what they wanted to do and saying, well, you know, this is the best
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I could do for the Lord. There are requirements that they'd be skilled, um, to do so. Um, you know, whether that was, you know, putting the tassels on the robes or, or, or making the robes or furnishing the walls of the temple and all this other sort of stuff, the gold and all that, um, all required artisans and, um, and, and tradesmen, which
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I believe is art. Um, and so, although some people would disagree, but it's,
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I don't, I think they're wrong. Um, so, so, you know, artisans and tradesmen and all the sort, sort of skilled labor that was required, uh, to be able to do that.
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Um, and, and so I think one of the reasons, uh, one of the things that God is waiting for before he returns is not just the gospel and forth throughout the world.
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I think an argument could be made that that's already happened, but he's waiting for the gospel to then beautify the earth, um, as well for that he can dwell among us.
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Um, and so that, that's the key thing. So artists are essential, uh, to the return, uh, of Christ coming again.
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It's so good. And I'll get in trouble because someone will say that's works where I just said works righteousness, but you know what
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I mean? It's the fruit, not the root. Yeah. Y 'all know what I mean. Let it be known.
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Yeah. Um, no, as you were saying that, and especially, um, the workers, like some of the most detailed portions of scripture that, that really like modern readers don't appreciate there, there's like the genealogies, which are filled with so many good things.
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And then there's the descriptions of buildings and how God wants them to be designed.
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Uh, the tabernacle is just fascinating. Like you look at the high priest clothing and it is, it is ornate.
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It is beautiful. It's, it's, uh, and it's so theological and throughout all of it, there, there, there is nothing that you can walk away from that section.
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I think it's Exodus 28, where you can't, where you, you just have to say, God cares about the details of these things and he loves art.
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Right. Yeah. No. Yeah. You know, the Bible says, you know, a wise man who's skilled in his work, he'll stand before Kings and not stand before obscure men.
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Um, what's the passage that says? Yeah. So, so, so, so that one. So, so, so, so that, that, that passage, the there's,
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God wants us to be skilled at what we do and he wants us to work. And that was one of the things with lore is we found out that like a lot of the me, any streaming company, they're super, they're super high risk.
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Uh, so, so they're going to put in 10 million, a hundred million dollars into a new piece of content.
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Um, and it has to succeed because they're spending so much money on it. Um, and part of that, the way they know that they can invest that money and it'll be a success is because they have this infrastructure really though that artists that allows artists to fail, right.
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And fail publicly. A good example of that is, you know, Saturday night live, um, you know, starting alive, they go and find comedians work in second city or the improv, right.
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And then they pay them a very minimal amount to be on Saturday night live and live in New York city.
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And, you know, basically it's enough that they can just rent a couch somewhere for the first three years.
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And then if they make it as a back, you know, behind the scenes cast member for three years and they get an actual cast member, a bigger contract.
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But then eventually they become, you know, Will Ferrell's and Adam Sandler's and, you know, Steve, well,
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Steve Carroll with Saturday night live, but he was improv and stuff. Uh, Colbert as well, not
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Saturday night live, but also through that same improv group. Um, and those, those guys went obviously daily show and then
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Colbert report. But, but it all started with the, like these underground sort of artistic movements, um, that are super low risk.
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You know, people are paying like five bucks a ticket to go to improv night, um, or a little bit more.
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But, but, uh, from there you, you get to see who the talent is and stuff. But when it comes to Christian art, we don't have any of those underground infrastructures to really, you know, what we like to say, like,
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Laura's a place for artists to fail in front of everybody. You know, like you can put up a content, people can absolutely hate it.
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They can reject it, not fund it. Um, uh, or they can fund it and then comes out and they go, this is awful.
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Why did I pay for that? Um, but it's a wave every now and then, somebody is going to do really well. Like Florida Lee is getting amazing reviews for an animated short cartoon, just in terms of like the storytelling and the comedy in it.
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Um, and that's a low budget. I think it's by me about 200 bucks an episode right now, just to be able to put what for him to make that.
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Um, and it's based off of, it's based off a video game that he made for Game Boy called, uh,
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Tremblay Island. Um, and so, um, like a homebrew video game. Um, so, so, so it's just that we don't have that independent market and that's why we wanted to create lore really.
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So artists can develop their skills and then go off to do a big budget angel studio production or big budget, uh, you know,
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Sony Affirm or, you know, whatever, um, or with the Irwin brothers and their projects.
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But because we don't have that underground infrastructure, you know, one of the things that, you know, John Irwin told me, we were having lunch with him one day.
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He said, what you guys are doing solves the problem that keeps me up at night. It's that there's no way to incubate talent.
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Um, and so all these guys are doing multimillion dollar streaming projects, hundreds of millions of dollars are putting into these things.
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I think Irwin's just made a deal with Amazon. Um, you know, Dallas Jenkins just is probably,
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I think part of that too. A lot of people are part of that hundreds of millions of dollars are up for grabs and yet they don't have a way to vet talent without taking it from Hollywood.
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And so we kind of see lures like we're the classical homeschool, Christian school film for film and artists to really build a name for themselves.
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That way they don't have to pull from Hollywood. They can just come from us and already vetted and with an audience built in.
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That's brilliant. And as someone who's not in that industry, I wouldn't have even known to think like that, that, that, that there needs to be,
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I mean, I've grew up playing baseball, so I know that there's the minor leagues and the minor leagues fund or sort of fuel the pros and there's
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G league and the NBA. I get that. I had no idea that that that was the case in the film and art world.
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Yeah. We have, we have independent film festivals, Tribeca film festival, right. And that's, and we have, you know, 48 hour film project.
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There's all sorts of secular and ways in which you can make a name for yourself in the film industry and get attention from Hollywood.
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But when it comes to the conservative film space, it's not, it's all very much based on who, you know, kind of incestuous in that way where it's, you know, it's, it's a friend of a friend or something along those lines.
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Maybe literally incestuous with Hollywood. Oh, well, yeah. Hollywood's literally incestuous, conservative entertainment's kind of incestuous, but but yeah, no, it's, it's just friend of a friend, buddy, you know, and usually the same guys making the same stuff, you know, all the pure flicks films,
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God's not dead one through five now or something like all made by the same people same writers, same directors, same actors you know, you know, so there's not really a big talent pool and the talent pool that they have isn't really that good, obviously.
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So, so really just creating an underground infrastructure is really a key strategy towards what we're doing.
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So that's so good. Um, and a couple other episodes that I've recorded, um, I talked about Christians needing the new history because history tells a post -millennial tale.
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It really is when you start with 12 and you end up with 2 billion now and you know, you can see progress.
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But, um, how do we, how did we get, and, and again, art is not my world brother, but how did we get from the
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Mozart's and the Beethoven's and the handles and in the Isaac Watts, how did we get from these guys who were creating art at a, at a prolific and, and world -class level to a place now where we don't even have talent pools to be able to, to make our movies?
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Yeah, we, so we became very Gnostic very early on. So, um, a lot of opposition to drama and fiction back, back in the early days of, you know,
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Shakespeare and that sort of thing. It was all, I, it was all always seen as idle time, that sort of stuff.
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If you, if you read, uh, you know, the Pilgrim's Progress, like it starts out, the very first pages of the
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Pilgrim's Progress starts out with, uh, Bunyan's Apology, right? And, and, and so if you read
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Bunyan's Apology, he's explaining in poem, the importance of fiction and narrative work, right?
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He had to, had to actually do that. No, he wasn't saying he's sorry for it. He was making an apologetic. Yeah. Yeah.
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It was the defense of fictional work, uh, uh, to be able to explain biblical, uh, stories.
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And so we, we, you know, television, we abandoned, um, there was a time when TV first came out that you actually, they actually had a council, um, that was responsible for all the ratings of content.
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And it was, they had a Jew, a Jew, a Catholic and a Protestant, I think, um, that, that is what they used.
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Basically they used Catholic church, Protestant church and the Jewish church as a means to have religion regulate, uh, the, the, the kind of content.
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And then the church just decided they didn't want to do that anymore. So they started the MPAA, um, which gives you your
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R system, BG 13s, PGs, and that's just completely secularized and government unions and government subsidies.
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And just, you know, it's propaganda wing now, but the church gave that up. They gave up that responsibility of, of that.
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And so, you know, that was back with TV and then same with movies. And you know, we, what happened was when is,
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I know this specifically cause we know the guy who told us who invented it, um, and told us how much of a disaster and how it destroyed the
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Christian film industry. But basically they found out, this guy found out, he's like, Hey, you know, if we, if we target the pastor and we say to the pastor,
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Hey, take this, let's say God's not dead movie. Um, and instead of having your audience buy tickets, why don't you as the church buy all the tickets to the theater for one night, um, all the showings, and then just pass out the tickets for free.
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Right. And that was such a huge success because churches all over the country would just buy out a whole theater.
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And, uh, it was basically subsidizing the box office results. So it was like, Oh man, see how popular this movie is.
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But it wasn't like it was like those movies would not have done as well if you just put them and compare it, put them up against Jurassic park.
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Right. Like it's like, it's not, they're not going to work. Um, but you were, they were able to fake it.
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Um, some ways angels have done that has done this exact same model. You can do the pay it forward and buy the movie tickets, uh, you know, and, uh, and in advance.
25:46
And so, you know, there have been the rumors. I don't, I haven't studied it very well, but there were rumors that people were going to movie theaters and they were completely empty, but sold out.
25:56
Um, so, so, so, so like that, that's a sort of like basically lying, but also, uh, your crew, you're only creating the movie for one person and that's the pastor of a church at that point.
26:06
And so now all your media and art is very church focused as opposed to real world focused.
26:12
Um, it's very, there's the gospel track, right? Like you have the prayer at the end of it.
26:18
Um, someone comes to Jesus, um, you know, and then in that sense, you have to regulate all the language, you have to regulate the violence.
26:26
Like it can't be too much. And, um, you know, and then it has to be very, uh, ecumenical too.
26:32
Um, so, so, you know, you can't really get into discussions about Catholics versus Protestants or, or whatever.
26:39
Um, so it just, it basically, it, it, it neuters, uh, it, it makes impotent
26:46
Christian media, um, that means. And so the guy who invented that system said we're slaying the dragon that he built and created.
26:54
And he was very happy about that. Uh, but yeah, it's a massive disaster. Um, but everybody's following it.
27:01
The other, the other main thing I would say, and if you look at, let's say the past 50 years, one of the biggest problems has been
27:07
Lifeway Christian bookstores. Not that Lifeway Christian bookstores were inherently bad, but the target demographic of Lifeway Christian bookstores was 35 year old women.
27:17
Um, that's, uh, the main shopper of most retail stores in general.
27:22
Um, and, and so, uh, except for like Home Depot. Right. Right. Um, but, but, uh, but, but so Lifeway Christian bookstores was basically our central distribution point in the world of Christian media, right?
27:36
So K -Love came out of Lifeway and they're pushing women to get
27:42
CDs or they're interviewing authors to go push them into Lifeway to get books.
27:48
And then there's nothing masculine in either one of those. Right. That's well, because Lifeway is the focal point, right?
27:56
So who shops at Lifeway? Women. Okay. So our music has to be for women. Our books have to be for women.
28:02
And then our movies have to be for women. Like this is, this is not, this is not a rumor, a theory.
28:07
This is, you can talk with anybody who's worked in this industry. This is, this is what they'll tell you. So it's all about because they knew that the
28:14
Christian movie, like God's Not Dead or something is only going to be in the theater for like a few weeks. And then they have to figure out, well, where do we get shelf space to sell
28:21
DVDs? And they're like, Oh, well, well, well we can get that at Lifeway. And so, so now they're trying to sell
28:27
DVDs and that means they have to make movies for women. Right. So, um, that's where you get all your children's preschool content.
28:36
You know, VeggieTales did really well because of that. Um, uh, you know, um, and I'm, I was a big fan of VeggieTales.
28:44
Uh, but, but even, even with that, we still had our own culture. Right. So we had VeggieTales, we had like Salty the
28:51
Bible. Like we had like, uh, uh, Gerber, uh, you know, like, so, so, uh, so we had all these, like Adventures in Odyssey is still running.
29:00
Um, they're about to do their big 10 ,000th episode celebration. Just I think
29:06
Adventures in Odyssey is probably one of the greatest Christian fiction series of all time.
29:11
It's awesome. But, but, but it was all still built, built towards that woman with kids. Right.
29:17
So that was all, that was still all the focus. Um, so even we had our own culture, but then what happened was
29:22
Spirit of Halloween, uh, not Spirit of Halloween, but Lifeway Christian bookstores bankrupted and became
29:27
Spirit of Halloween stores. Right. Um, and, and so now they're just abandoned buildings and we did that.
29:35
We bankrupted and shut down all the Lifeway Christian bookstores without a new distribution point.
29:41
I kind of feel like underneath all of this, Marcus, these are, these are sort of symptoms of even something bigger.
29:48
Uh, and I've been talking about this a lot that when dispensationalism and premillennialism had a resurgence, uh, it was an ancient view for a couple of hundred years.
29:57
It really went out of focus in the Christian church for over a thousand years. It came back in the 19th century.
30:05
And from that point when we started teaching Christians that our greatest goal is escape out of here, why would we invest in art?
30:13
Why would we invest in finance? Like just the, the, the sheer fact that most people don't, most
30:20
Christians today don't have anything to leave their children because they're not expecting they're going to have to like that sort of attitude has crippled all of these things.
30:29
It's caused probably a lot of what you're talking about. Wouldn't you say? Yeah, no, that's a, that, that is a tremendous thing, especially in boomer mentality right now, especially as I, cause
30:41
I talk with investors and, um, you know, boomers just in general are about, they want to, they want to, they want to spend their money on stuff for themselves, right?
30:52
So whether that's cruise ships or, or whatever, they're not thinking about their great grandchildren. Uh, they're, they're not, um, and you know, there's,
31:00
I was just talking to a guy the other day who's building an investment company that buys businesses from boomers so that they can get them in the hands of, of Christians, uh, who are going to keep it because there's, they'll sell it to the left in a heartbeat.
31:14
Right. And you know, and S and so that's a, that's a great venture program, uh, that sort of thing, but that's how bad it is.
31:22
Um, you know, boomer investing is not very good and, uh, they, they, and they want content for themselves.
31:29
So this is where you see daily wire come in, which is boomer money. It's boomer money.
31:34
It's boomer media. Um, and they're all focused on just making content for that older generation.
31:41
But the problem is, uh, uh, there's never been a cultural media artistic revolution in the history of the world that has started with the older generation first.
31:50
Right. So from Elvis, you know, Woodstock MTV, adult swim, right?
31:57
Like all these cultural artistic transformations have all started really with the younger generation, the mindset, even
32:04
Disney, right? Like it was all kids cartoons. Um, and they, right. So, you know, of course you're going to have content for children that parents like, or content for teens that parents will like.
32:18
I'm not saying that, you know, we just make content that is sinful and immoral to the world, to be the parents trying to teach, but you actually can make content that parents don't like to watch, but the kids can watch the teenage mutant
32:33
Ninja Turtles. I don't remember my parents ever watching an episode of teenage mutant Ninja Turtles with me. I don't remember my parents playing a lot of Nintendo games with me, um, but they bought me that stuff and it wasn't anything inherently immoral in that stuff.
32:47
Uh, right. And so, so, but when it comes to conservative media, we're like, no, we have to make stuff for the parents.
32:53
And then, and then the parents can, it's like, well, that's nonsense. It's nonsense. And even if, you know,
33:01
I had somebody say, uh, that he doesn't believe in entertainment and isolate his kids, entertainment and isolation or whatever.
33:08
And, you know, so making content for kids to watch that the parents don't watch is, you know, he doesn't agree with that.
33:14
He's like, what does it matter if you agree with that? Cause the left is doing it. Right. So for the 90 % of the population that are not classically homeschooled,
33:23
CREC church goers, uh, you can make content that reaches the audience or, uh, you, you can just let the left do it.
33:33
That vacuum is going to be filled, right? You can sit there and complain that all the sugary cereals are on the bottom shelf.
33:40
Uh, but your option is, well, why don't you make a non -sugary cereal with a mascot that the kids like just to say, you know, uh, so, so, so, cause somebody is going to fill it.
33:52
Um, and, and, and, and, and, and, and so that's sort of, uh, that that's sort of what we're up against is just sort of like almost like a, just, it's just not a, it's not a normal view.
34:05
And, you know, a lot of this, you know, this is like, I have this conversation a lot is like, how are
34:11
CREC churches going to reach inner city urban communities? Like, that's a question I don't think we talk about a lot, but like, that's something
34:18
I want to help with. You know, I want, I want a inner city urban Psalm based hip hop.
34:27
Like, I think that needs to happen. I would agree. Well, everybody agrees, but like, what are we doing to do it?
34:35
Like we're not, we're not, we're not, we're not doing it. We're like, there's no outreach. Uh, as far as I'm aware of,
34:41
I would, I would love to know if I'm sure there is, but there's none that's, you know, at least if it's being done, it doesn't, it's not platform or advertised.
34:49
Um, but yeah, like, like inner city, you know, um, uh, uh, music, uh,
34:55
I, I, I talked to somebody who's, who's talking about, uh, working out some of the Psalms and the gospel music and, you know, just like, that's the sort of stuff like that needs to happen.
35:05
Uh, but that can't happen in the current distribution channels. Um, and you need to get that out there in such a way that it actually bypasses the parents and gets right into the hand of the teenagers.
35:16
Um, you know, uh, and, and, and, and so that's, you know, offensive to people, but you know, if we don't do it, someone will, maybe even rephrasing it to say making content that is not primarily aimed at parents, but aimed at, at teens and kids, stuff that they would actually enjoy to watch even college students.
35:34
There's no market for college student at all, you know? Um, yeah.
35:40
Right. So, you know, like I want every NSA student to get a lower subscription, right?
35:46
Like that's, that's what you want. Um, you know, but, but yeah, there's not really that, there's not really that push to really make that content that a parent will be like, okay,
35:57
I'll buy this for you, but I'm not going to watch it. Right. But it's okay. It's like, it's okay. They can watch you pay attention to it in the background and stuff, but not, you know,
36:07
I want to go back to something you said just a moment ago. This is fascinating to me. Um, you said cultural revolution never begins with the older generation, always begins with the younger.
36:15
And it's demonstrable. You, you gave several examples, but if you study history, it's true. I mean, even in revival culture in America where you've got deal
36:25
Moody going to the students, like it revivals of any sort start with young people.
36:31
Um, and then they progress from there. I'm thinking that back in the reformation, art was actually really important.
36:40
And yet our circles often deemphasize how art was used in the reformation actually spread the reformation.
36:47
Uh, I guess I would say, is that true? And how has art been used by God, uh, to bring revival to his church?
36:56
Well, I mean, man, if you look at like during the reformation, Martin Luther's hymns that he wrote, um, you know, we, we,
37:03
Martin Luther, we think about the 95 theses or whatever, but Martin Luther was actually also one of the first people to use the printing press to print music.
37:12
Um, right. And there's a really great book too called brand Luther that talks about all the marketing and creativity of Luther and, and during the reformation that got comic strips, right?
37:27
Yeah. Yeah. Right. So lots of art just throughout. And then, and then the other thing too, is like, you know, even, uh, during reformational art too, the church was actually, uh, paying money for art, right.
37:39
They were the ones that were financing it, you know, even to build the cathedrals and stuff like that.
37:45
Um, some of it was Catholic of course, but, but still the, the church was the main and the main, what's the word for, uh, they were the main ones funding art.
37:55
Right. So, so we don't have that now. Um, our church is not funding art.
38:02
They're funding, uh, gospel tracks and film form. Um, and, and that's not the same thing as just funding.
38:11
Uh, look, I'm going to tell you right now, if you were to go to any Christian conservative streaming service and say,
38:17
Hey, I got this cartoon show. It's teddy bears reenacting the most violent, Old Testament Bible stories. It's not going to be picked up anyway.
38:23
No one's going to do it. No one has the guts to do it. There's a lack of courage, uh, that's required to be able to fund art.
38:30
Um, uh, it, I mean, Hollywood for sure has that lack of courage. Um, uh, there's tremendous lack of courage from Hollywood to put out conservative content even.
38:42
Um, and so, and then in the church, there's a lack of courage to put out, you know, bold storytelling that, um, is relevant, um, uh, especially to the world we live in.
38:54
And so, but yeah, it is, it is what a lot of the stuff we're up against, you know, we, we're trying to raise money and, you know, every, you know, all these streaming platforms raising hundreds of millions of dollars and we're going to people and saying, we're not doing that.
39:08
Um, we're going after the college students. Everybody looks at us like we're crazy, you know, cause that's never been done before.
39:14
Literally in history, there's never been a Christian entertainment space that has said, we're going to just go after teenagers.
39:22
Um, and you know, and so that's sort of what we're doing. And, uh, you know, we make content for all ages.
39:29
Um, you know, we have an R rated adult comedy special that has a bunch of conservative comics on it, you know, making tranny jokes that is not for kids to watch.
39:39
Uh, but there's a few Christians on there as well. And the guy that made it was like, I just want the Christians, uh, the
39:45
Christian comics to compete against the unbeliever comics and let the audience decide who's funnier.
39:52
Right. And so, so like we have shows like that, but we, but we also have shows for preschoolers and we have shows for teenagers and you know, it's just, we're just trying to say that, you know,
40:03
Christian movies aren't a genre. They are the full scope of storytelling. Um, and my theory is that any good story, whether it's the
40:12
Mandalorian or Top Gun is at the core, like a Christian story. Um, and, and, and so, or they, they steal aspects.
40:20
So the Christian story to make theirs. Um, but that idea is so foreign. Um, it's not talked about.
40:27
It's not, uh, there's no high theology that's being used to determine what is and is not a good
40:35
Christian story. Um, it's all just based on math and data and metrics that are very easy cut and paste stats, uh, to get a quick buck as opposed to the idea that, you know,
40:49
MTV wasn't making money when it first came out. Um, if you read, read the book,
40:55
I want my MTV, which I recommend any Christian that's interested in arts and entertainment, just, just read biography, art, biography, business stuff.
41:06
Biography of Jim Henson is a great one. I want my MTV is a great one. The orange years for Nickelodeon is another great one.
41:12
There's a documentary about that as well. Um, and what creativity,
41:18
Inc creativity is phenomenal as well. Yeah, I've read that one. Uh, but all these, there's tons of like every, like the history of food network's amazing.
41:26
Like, like, right. Like nobody reads these, you know, we read our theology books or our biographies of theologians.
41:34
Uh, but read the, like if you read these, you know, I think Jason Farley is our chief content officer.
41:40
We were having a conversation and we were just reading home. We don't play that. The history of in living color. That's a phenomenal book, man.
41:47
It's like, this is what I'm saying. Like people don't read these things and you just read this stuff and it's always the same story over and over and over again.
41:54
And living color was amazing because there was no distribution for black entertainment, um, at the time.
42:00
And all the black entertainment that you did have was not authentic inner city worldview.
42:07
It was, it was all like the Cosby show, right? And Cosby show was, was more, uh, upper middle class, right.
42:15
Then it was poor inner city. So there was no distribution points for poor inner city, urban content and living color comes along.
42:23
Fox is a new network and they're just trying to push boundaries and do stuff completely different than anybody else is.
42:29
And they created three billionaires from that show. Right. So, so it's, you know, it's like, uh, and it was super low budget, you know, they were making fun of homosexuals on that show.
42:39
They went up against the network. The network didn't want them to do that. They, they made fun of, uh, they had a disabled superhero, um, on there.
42:48
Uh, that was one of the characters and they were very scared about making fun of disabled people, but they ran the sketches in front of a focus group of disabled people and the disabled people were like,
42:58
Oh, we finally have a superhero. That's amazing. Um, and, and so they let it play. So, so in living color really pushed those boundaries of like what the networks would allow and in doing so they found a new audience that people didn't even know existed, you know, and from there, you know, uh, it was actually on one street.
43:17
There was one street in LA that you could go and you would have a CBGBs, which was the start of the punk rock music revolution.
43:26
And you can walk a few blocks down and you could go to these black underground comedy clubs where Eddie Murphy was and you know, all these amazing black black comedians that came about as a result during that time, seventies, eighties,
43:39
Richard Pryor, early nineties. What would you say? Richard Pryor. Yeah. Yeah. So it all came right.
43:46
CBGBs and this little, uh, black comedy club is this cultural media revolution and it, it didn't come from, it didn't come from Hollywood, right.
43:56
It didn't come from the multimillion dollars. And so, you know, when we're talking to investors and they're saying,
44:02
Oh, you know, you need, you know, you gotta have a list actors that charge $20 million per movie.
44:08
If you're ever going to make it. Um, we're just like, have you ever read an entertainment book?
44:13
Like, have you ever read one? You know, like MTV had no money. Um, the, they, they had, they didn't music when
44:22
MTV was made, the music videos were not a thing. Like nobody knew what they were. When they first started, they didn't have enough music videos to run all day.
44:30
And they were just looping the same music over and over and over again. And they didn't even know if like it was, if anybody was watching, they, they had no idea.
44:40
They had no way to get feedback. And then until one day, some executives were like in Oklahoma where they got reports.
44:48
I think, I think they've got reports from parents who are complaining about the music videos or whatever. So the executives fly out to Oklahoma and they go to a record store and they ask for, uh, the album for one of the musicians that's on, uh,
45:01
MTV, the music video was in rotation. And they said, Oh no, man, that's MTV artists were sold out.
45:07
And that was the first time they realized that the music videos is resulting in actual, uh, album sales.
45:15
And so that's when they really took off and got the investment funding they needed. But I mean, at the time, like music videos weren't a thing.
45:22
Like imagine pitching to someone an idea for content that doesn't exist yet. We're going to put a whole network around this crazy thing called music videos and people are like, what is a music video?
45:34
And they're like, Oh, well, you make a song, a video with the band. And they're like, well, nobody does that.
45:40
It's like, yeah, but they will, we just know it in our gut. They will like imagine getting investment for that.
45:46
Like not among conservative investors. You're not because they really only care about real estate.
45:51
Right. And they're, you know, they don't want to bury their talents, but they, they, they want them sticking up out of the ground a little.
45:58
Right. So, so that's the conservative mentality when it comes to investing.
46:04
It's a nightmare. It's absolute nightmare. And, uh, you know, I'll tell you this story for your audience.
46:10
I haven't told it publicly, but we were meeting, it's a story of how
46:16
Christians lost the rights to CS Lewis's chronicles in our family forever. Um, so, uh, please be sitting down or pull over if you're listening to this in your car, cause it's gonna, um, so a guy we met at one of our cigar meetups came up to us and goes,
46:30
Hey man, I was, I was the guy that tried to acquire the rights, uh, before Disney got them from Walden media.
46:37
And so I knew the guy. Um, and I said, Hey, I'd love to make sure that this lands in the hands of Christians.
46:44
And he's like, okay, great. So we're going to sell the rights, all the movie rights, $150 million. And the guy was like, no problem.
46:50
This is what I do. This guy raises millions of dollars for movies and entertainment all the time. And he goes and he goes to every
46:56
Christian billionaire, every wealthy Christian. He knows this is $150 million. Greatest Christian fiction of all time.
47:03
CS Lewis chronicles, Narnia, absolute guarantee hit. And everyone goes, why would
47:08
I pay $150 million for something that already exists? Right. And he can't get the money. Right. And so then, and then he gets a phone call to come to the hotel and he comes to the hotel.
47:18
And one of the guys is like, Hey man, sorry, we just sold the rights to Disney. And he's like, no problem. I, uh, I, uh, you know,
47:25
I, I was, I, I couldn't get the money. I tried and he goes and sits down and there's a guy there that, uh, is there, um, who was helping orchestrate that deal for the
47:35
CS Lewis estate. And he says, does it bother you that Christians lost the rights to Chronicles Narnia to Disney?
47:42
And the guy says, I don't effing care. And right. So we don't have that view of like these stories need to be in Christian hands for multiple generations anymore.
47:52
It's just all about. Yeah. And so that's, you know, one of the reasons at lore, we're very committed to all the artists we work for own their
48:00
IP. Um, we don't put, we don't do predatory contracts. Um, uh, all we do is if we raise money on the platform, it's exclusive on our platform for a period of time, and then they can go and do what they want.
48:14
Um, and, and, uh, and, and that way, you know, the storytellers are able to create
48:21
IP for their great grandchildren to be able to benefit from later on down the road. I remember listening and that's super essential to what we do.
48:29
And I think that act of loving your neighbor by not taking away, they're taking away their labor, um, and giving them the fruits of their labor, even later on down the road.
48:39
Um, is a way that's going to guarantee us the absolute best artists, um, and lower costs.
48:47
I was just reminds me of remember Dave Chappelle talking about this, that HBO basically stole his content.
48:53
So he has no access to it after all these years, uh, which is, uh, I think it's over and over and over again.
49:00
Yeah. Predatory contracts. I think there was a Rolling Stone article just recently accusing angel of predatory contracts.
49:07
Wow. It's really the only business conservatives and Christians know, cause a lot of your conservatives and Christians who are in the film industry come from Hollywood.
49:15
So that's what they know. Yeah. And we, we like to say, we don't know what we're doing. Um, and that sort of gives us an advantage.
49:24
Um, as every major cultural institution started the MTV, they didn't know what they were doing.
49:30
Right. We just listen, I listened to me and Jason Farley just listening to a podcast on the creation of the discovery channel.
49:40
And that guy who started the discovery channel, which now owns HBO and time
49:45
Warner, right? Like, so discovery channel beat them all. He had no idea what he was doing.
49:50
He called up a satellite company. He's a grant writer. The guy's a grant writer. He calls up satellite company. He goes, Hey, I really like documentaries.
49:57
I was thinking like, wouldn't it be cool if there was like, you know, uh, uh, a documentary on a
50:05
TV channel that just does documentaries all day. We'll call it discovery channel, whatever. I don't even know if it had that name.
50:11
And the satellite company, you know, satellites were really expensive. So they were like, well, here's how much it'll cost you per month.
50:18
And the guy was like, man, that's all, that's a lot of money. And then, but the discovery, but, but the satellite channels had, they needed to fill time, right?
50:25
They needed to sell that space. So they said, well, we'll give you 30 days to a free satellite time.
50:32
And that should be enough time for you to raise money. And that's exactly how the discovery channel came into play, man. Um, they didn't know what they were doing.
50:39
Right. You just hear this over and over. All these major media institutions are just over and over again.
50:45
The story is it's people who don't know what they're doing. They just want to make good content. Like they're not, they don't really care about the bureaucracy of the infrastructures and stuff that's been established.
50:55
And that's how we win. Um, it is completely in opposition to the way the world works in theory, but you know,
51:04
I'm constantly reminded of God cutting down Gideon's army. Right. Right. And it's just, that's just how, that's just how things work in the long run.
51:13
So we're in a really good position at lower and, uh, it's, it's really fun.
51:18
Uh, we've been talking about this for three years and no one's taken our ideas. So no, no one's got the guts to do what we're doing.
51:24
And so we're not worried about it. Um, but, uh, yeah, so it's, it's exciting to be able to really push through and build this thing that's never existed before.
51:33
That's so good. And just to sort of kind of talk about where we've been, you've made a biblical case for God loves art.
51:41
You've made a cultural case for why art is important. You even tied it into, uh,
51:46
God uses art in revival to bring his people, uh, into relationship with him because people are going to consume some sort of media.
51:55
So God uses gospel media, whether it's Luther's comic comic strips, or whether it's the great hymns of the church or Luther, even writing hymns with bar tunes, like all of this stuff,
52:07
God has used in a mighty way. So now I guess maybe the, the next thing we talk about is, um, how can the average person get involved in reclaiming the arts, which is a great post -millennial venture.
52:23
We need to take that Hill. Uh, how can the average person get involved in that? And then maybe a second follow -up question is what if we're not in the arts, but we want to take exactly the courage that you're showing in your industry.
52:35
And how do we apply that in other industries as well? Because it's going to be multiple Hills. That's going to win back culture.
52:41
It's not just the arts, but it's, it's a lot of Hills. Yeah. There's more than seven mountains.
52:49
That's what I like. And we're not that kind of post -millennial here.
52:55
That's right. That's right. No, that's what I say. When I talk to people and they're like, Oh yeah, I'm seven mountains. I was like, Oh, well
53:00
I'm all, we're the mountain range. Yeah. Yeah. We're the Himalayas here. But, uh, no,
53:06
I think, you know, I think the first thing to look at is, you know, I'll get into my post -mill fan fiction here.
53:13
Um, I, I, I think, um, I, I, I don't, I, I think that there's so much amazing technology and scientific breakthroughs that just have not come through yet.
53:27
Um, and a lot of that is because the gospel hasn't gone forth enough, um, or the technology hasn't been created by a
53:36
Christian individual. Um, and I think there, we're starting to see this stagnation, um, you know, with new technology where it's really hard to advance, um, into something new.
53:48
And I think that if you just go through biblical history here, if you have, uh, do you have
53:55
Tower of Babel? Um, well, well actually let's start with the flood. So the flood and then, you know, what does
54:01
Noah's name mean? It means, uh, I'll remove the curse of the ground. Right. Uh, that's what Noah's name means.
54:07
Um, and then he gets off, he gets off the, off the boat. And then God says, no more.
54:13
Well, I punished the ground on account a man, nor will I flood the earth again.
54:18
Right? So it's, it's two separate things. It's not just, we always say the rainbow means he's not going to flood the earth again, but it's not just that it's that he's not going no longer.
54:29
Will he curse the ground on account of man? So I think there was a reversal of the toil of the, uh, of the ground there.
54:37
I think from there, then you start to see all this ag, if you go to answers in Genesis, they talk about two, there's all these agricultural advancements that happened after the flood that was not prior.
54:47
Right. And so then you get the Tower of Babel and they use all these technological advancements for evil.
54:54
Right. And then God says, no. And, and they're not, they're not going forth throughout the world. They're not subduing the earth.
54:59
They're, they're just all together in one place. And God says, no, you got to go out and dominion of the whole earth.
55:07
And so he spreads them out, curses their language. And then, so from that point, the
55:12
Tower of Babel all the way till after Pentecost, there was no scientific advancement in the means of communication until after Jesus resurrected from the dead in Pentecost.
55:25
Right. And then you see, right, the reverse of the curse, uh, of Tower of Babel, everybody's speaking in different languages.
55:32
We can finally translate now on a much broader scale. We get the invention of paper. Right. So finally we don't have to use papyrus anymore.
55:40
It's about a hundred AD. Then we get the printing press and about 1500, 14, 1500s.
55:46
And then obviously enough time for Martin Luther to come about and be able to utilize it. And then you get the
55:53
Christian invention of Morse code and the telegraph, which I think
55:58
Gary North, it was the one that said, uh, never before in history, um, has there been a single technological advancement as, as, as revolutionary as that?
56:09
Because, uh, with the telegraph, but the day before the telegraph, you could only communicate at the speed of a horse.
56:18
And then the very next day you could communicate at the speed of light. Wow. Like it was literally that sort of shift.
56:24
And that was done by Samuel Morris, who, whose wife died. He was an artist, actually. His wife died while he was doing a painting.
56:31
He was commissioned to do a painting. And the letter he got in the mail, um, from the horse said, by the time you get this, your wife is sick.
56:40
She'll be dead and buried. So finish your work and don't worry about the funeral. It'll be over by the time you get here. And it was just like, and, and, you know, and you can read these, uh, you, if you
56:48
Google letters to Sam Morris or letters from Sam Morris, you can read these, his, his, his, uh, mother reminds him of the
56:56
Westminster confession and the glorify God and this, I mean, just amazing story of this
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Christian story. And, you know, and so he's like in a bar and they're talking about these experiments with electricity and lightning.
57:08
And he goes, well, can you communicate with that? And the guys laughed at him and they went home and he figured out how to make the telegraph.
57:14
And then you get the invention of the transatlantic cable, which was tried several times, but it wasn't until the
57:20
Christian, uh, came together and they did a prayer and they sang a hymn over the two boats from England to America in the middle of the ocean and they connected it.
57:29
And then that worked. Right. So, so, and then the first, the first transatlantic cable, uh, from the president,
57:36
I think it was Coolidge to be wrong with president Coolidge to the queen was may this be used for the furtherance of the gospel among the nations.
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And may it ever be neutral during the time of war, uh, for the furtherance of humans.
57:51
And, you know, I mean, you read that, it's insane that you would have a president. The first message, the first telegraph message was what have
57:58
God wrought. Right. So it was just like, you just have all these scientific advancements throughout all of history that just continue to move forward only as a result of Christianity.
58:09
So there's almost like a curse of technology. Um, and the curse of, of, of blocking, uh, advancement.
58:19
So my hope one day if Lord is really well is I want to start a, a venture fund called risky ventures.
58:28
And, uh, it'll, it's just about post -meal sci -fi sort of tech and, you know, teleportation or whatever.
58:36
And, you know, just really sort of seeing what is God, you know, locked away for us that he's waiting for Christians to be the ones that do it.
58:45
And so, you know, there, there's, there's a lot of scientific advancements that got to happen by Christians in order for us to live, to be 900 years old again.
58:56
So, um, that's, that's where I'm pushing, you know, I want to, I want to be the post -meal fanfic guy.
59:03
Well, just even, I don't think many people know that story. I didn't know that story about the transatlantic cable.
59:08
I knew about Samuel Morris, uh, just to know that that we have been at the forefront of advancing technology.
59:15
And what an, what an incredible way to share the gospel. As Calvin Coolidge said in that, in that, you know, a telegram, like I, I hope that your venture with lure,
59:26
I hope it sparks something and invigorate something in us as Christians to, uh, in, in whatever industry we're in to be leading in it and to, and to really push the bounds, take risk for Jesus because, um, that really the culture was given to us when
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Jesus said all authority in heaven and earth now belong to me. Now you go make disciples. He's putting the church in charge of the world and bringing it under the authority of the gospel.
59:51
So why would we retreat from that and why would we abandon that? Yeah, I don't know.
59:56
It gets even better. Like the first radio broadcast was reading of Luke, um, the Christmas time and I think candles
01:00:03
Messiah or no, or the, or they saying like joy to the world or some Christian Christmas. And, um, yeah, there's just, so it's just, it's just, it's just, it just repeats itself over and over and over again.
01:00:15
You know, it's like, well, you know, why, why do we have cancer in the world because Christians have not invested money and resources in a
01:00:23
Christian view of, of, of, of science. Right. So, so, um, you know, and it's, it's just over and over again.
01:00:30
So like what you were asking me, like, what would I do if I wasn't involved in the media arts, but I was supposed to want to do something.
01:00:36
I would just say, man, dude, just do crazy stuff like biohack medicine in your garage and, you know, try to figure out, you know, how, you know, genetics works or DNA works or cancer works from a
01:00:49
Christian worldview. Um, you know, like, you know, and do it for the furtherance of the gospel, you know, do you, you know, figure out ways we can teleport missionaries wherever we want, like the, like, you know, think of it, think of inventing things with those mindsets.
01:01:04
Um, and I think that's how God blesses it. Um, yeah. But, uh, and then of course, you know, uh, space travel and I like Rod Martin, he's on our advisory board and he talks about, um, wanting to plant the first church on Mars.
01:01:20
Um, and you know, how we need to start prepping and preparing to be able to do that because that's going to be colonies on Mars is going to be a real thing and we can sit back and go, well, we're to take dominion of the earth, not
01:01:33
Mars. And meanwhile, the Pagans will. So, so, you know, so doing that is going to be amazing.
01:01:40
Um, but just thinking in those terms, it's not very few Christians that think in those terms anymore. And, uh, it is dispensationalism that's caused that, but you know, it used to take, uh, it's used to take 400 years to build a church building, you know?
01:01:52
So, right. Yeah. As I'm thinking about that and I want to honor your time brother, um, as well, but, um, as I'm thinking about that, there's so much that's just so shallow these days.
01:02:04
Like you think about those cathedrals, there's beautiful works of art and architecture. And now we have, we have churches in 10 buildings.
01:02:11
Like there's, there's something that we've lost and there's something that we've got to recover in Christendom, whether someone agrees with you or not on, on whether we're going to colonize
01:02:20
Mars is not important. It's a spirit of creativity and, and like curiosity even to, to take risks and to do things for Jesus, to make this world, not just, um, a better place, but to bring his gospel to other people as well.
01:02:34
And you said that brilliantly, brother, I think you have hit something. Oh, they want to think once they write the parable, the talents talks about, um, not bearing your, your money in the ground, right?
01:02:47
Jesus rebukes, sends them to hell. Actually, he doesn't just rebuke him. He sends them to hell because he could have got more money, uh, more interest from the banks.
01:02:56
Right. Um, and, and, and he, and he wasn't complimenting people that put their money in banks as their means to make it money on interest.
01:03:05
That wasn't what he was doing. He was rebuking both of them actually. Um, and the second, um, uh, the
01:03:11
Bible says, uh, that cowards go to hell. Right. So, so when you put those two stories together, when we're being careful and cautious with our money to such a degree that we're not innovating, we're only doing the sure thing.
01:03:25
When you're investing in somebody, you're, you're bearing each other's burdens. One guy's saying,
01:03:31
I'm going to do the labor and get a return. The other guy's saying, I'm going to give you the capital to do it. Right.
01:03:36
And so there's a bearing of each other's burdens. And when you only wait for the sure thing, you're not really carrying any burden at all.
01:03:43
Um, and so I think that's a sinful form of investing. Although there are, there are times to be able to do that and hedge that and do like that's smart wisdom.
01:03:53
When that's the only thing you do. Um, it's a, I think it's sinful. Coward is.
01:03:59
Yeah. Yeah. So invest in more risk at all. That's what I was actually just getting ready to say is risk at all.
01:04:06
If you're an accredited investor, hit me up, but my risk at all. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, but no, that's, that's, that's just the mindset mindset.
01:04:15
Nobody has anymore. Yeah. As we close, I just want to encourage everybody who's listening. Uh, check out
01:04:21
Laura dot TV, check out, um, what they're doing, invest in it. Um, and, and be a part of funding really great media that that can come out and, and sort of help be a distribution channel for other
01:04:32
Christian media as well. So support, uh, what they're doing there, support Marcus, support the team.
01:04:38
And also if you have talents, uh, don't bury them, be creative with them, start businesses, create an alternative economy, uh, because odds are they're going to be people who come to Christ through those ventures and through those things.
01:04:52
We have one life. There's a great poem by, uh, CT stud, I believe is his name. One life shall soon be passed only what is done for Christ will last.
01:05:02
Let's be risky and let's do everything we can to the glory of God for the glory of Jesus Christ. That's all
01:05:08
I got brother. All right. That was great, man. Hey, thank you so much for coming on and being a part of this, man.
01:05:13
I, I learned so much and I'm so, I like, I'm ready to run through a wall right now. I'm so pumped up man.
01:05:19
Fan fiction is good, man. I feel like we're going to have to have another conversation to dive more into that.
01:05:24
Cause I, I'm down for it. I'd love to. Yeah. We'll get into AI and um, how it's going to reduce the toil of the earth.
01:05:33
Hey, I can't wait. Next, next series. We're, we're, we're doing all right. God bless you brother.