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April 23, 2020 - Louder with Crowder
33:16
Bonding Over Shared Hatred of Pedophiles | Ash Wednesday | Ep 669
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Time Text
Hey, good to see you again today, if you were here, obviously, for Good Morning Mug Club this morning.
If you're not, seeing you's alright.
Of course, it is Mug Club Quarantine Month, where we are doing two shows.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we're doing Good Morning Mug Club, and we're offering everything for free in front of the paywall, so what you're about to watch is Ash Wednesday, a little more casual, where you guys send in your questions, your topics.
We talk about them, not necessarily political.
The promo code is QUARANTINE.
If you enter that in, you get $30 off.
So that after this month, you can still see all of this content at lightearthcreditor.com slash MugClub.
That's quarantine, $30 off.
It's our way of giving back to you because we can't sing or dance and none of us can separate conjoined twins.
So in a medical pandemic, I don't know of how much use to you I am beyond d*** jokes,
but I hope that you enjoy this program and we'll see you tomorrow with the live stream.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Those are some central noises.
Welcome to Ash Wednesday.
How do you know it's Ash Wednesday?
Because I'm wearing this shirt.
Oh.
We fixed the saturation.
The reason I can only wear this shirt on Wednesday because the red is too bright.
Too vibrant lights on the Ash Wednesday.
It's vibrant.
It is vibrant.
I'm like, I'm not very vibrant right now.
You don't have to be.
Because I went to sleep very late.
By the way, we have Quarterback Garrett, Gerald A., Half-Asian Bill, and Reg, the beast, the researcher.
Can I ask why?
Reg, how did you come to exist?
How did I come to exist?
On the show.
On the show, I think Steven noticed me, under one of my many pseudonyms on Twitter, arguing with someone.
I thought you messaged me a story.
I was arguing with someone about abortion in the comments to one of your tweets, and I was just a fan, and you messaged me and said, hello, senor.
You seem like a smart fellow.
And I said, oh, thanks.
And we chatted a tiny bit.
This stuff's fake.
Then I started sending you articles and stuff that I'd written on Medium.
And then we connected.
We really bonded over the salon pedophile.
Yes, it was.
It brought us together.
I'm glad it did.
Our mutual hatred for pedophiles, I think that was what actually started them.
Brothers in anti-pederast arms.
If there was a reason to bond people together.
Just like Marx and Engels.
He is the Spock to my Kirk, if I were a Kirk, but I'm not.
He's a Spock to my guy with a big head.
I don't remember this about Reg exactly, but I must have noticed just how sharp he was.
That guy gets laid.
Haven't you heard?
He gets around.
But it is true.
I don't remember this about Reg exactly, but I must have noticed just how sharp he was.
I didn't know at the time, though, that you were sending articles to everybody during
He just liked to be a disruptor.
He was working at a college and then it turned out he was just sending stuff out to people who he thought could get the message out, which was smart, just to try and cause chaos.
Yeah, the meme war was in 2016.
They were pretty great.
I had a lot of many, many accounts and many avenues, but this was the one that really worked.
This was a good one.
Tell people who don't know, by the way, you can send in your video questions.
I think we have one today at lotofpedder.com slash ask, but tell them about the Salon Pedophile for people who don't remember.
Because I remember you sent it to me, and I thought, well, Salon's going to Salon.
They support pedophiles, you know?
No surprise.
Yeah, so Todd Nickerson, they wrote this puff piece about a pedophile called Todd Nickerson, or named Todd Nickerson rather.
Say that back to him, Seth.
They wrote a puff piece about a pedophile.
Todd Nickerson, a puff piece about a pedophile.
But his whole shtick was, I am a minor attracted person, but I would never ever act on it.
Right.
And so it was called, like, the Virtuous Pedophile or whatever.
Wow.
I think it was called I'm a Pedophile but Not a Monster.
It's slightly different than Virtuous Pedophile.
There were actually a lot of articles around that time.
They were really pushing it.
Yeah, there was a really strong movement.
Yeah, I ended up digging, he was on these message boards, and gotta hand it to him, he used his real name several times on the message boards, and it was some debate forum where you would, you know, talk about really edgy things like pedophilia or whatever.
Wait, why would you have to hand it to him?
I'm just saying.
If you're gonna be a pedophile... Sounds like Bernie on China.
Well, the economy!
Poverty.
I think Reg tries to look for something in his opponent to respect.
You know, sex with kids, but he uses his own name.
Look at this guy, he's walking.
Two legs.
That's a feet.
On these debate boards, he actually said that if society ever became more accepting and more sex positive, he would engage in sex play with a child.
He said, I'll never apologize for that.
Wow.
So his whole basis for saying that, you know, I would never act on it, actually he had sort of committed to exactly that.
But wasn't he talking about in the message boards grooming and all that stuff?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It seemed like he was actively grooming someone.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
And last I checked, he's like 40-something and he was with some girl who's like just turned 18.
Well, you know what?
Baby steps.
Please not babies.
He's already going after babies.
Baby steps.
Newly adult steps.
And then he wrote like three more articles.
We did this whole article and what I wrote was, hey, there's a certain point where I'm no longer, I guess I'm no longer prioritizing empathy.
Yeah.
Our priority is the children, the most vulnerable among us.
Imagine right now if it was a coronavirus and someone's like, but you know what?
I really, I really like coughing on old people.
Yeah.
Let's just try and understand.
It's like, no, at a certain point you're not allowed in the village.
Right.
And so for me, I think I even wrote, I said, you get your help.
We hope that you get your help, but you can't be in the village.
These are the boundaries.
If you try to reenter, you get a bullet in the head.
Yeah, exactly.
And then he wrote, he had the gall to write an article, was it my week or my month in the right wing hate sphere?
What cosmic bunny hole did I fall through that a currently active pedophile gets to call me a monster?
And then I realized it was the salon cosmic hole.
What I find most interesting about that is that by implication it's that there's some kind of left wing sphere where he's celebrated.
And that he's a hero, but if he goes into this other world called, you know, being a moral person, he's vilified.
Why does everything have to be left and right with you?
Well, I hate pedophiles, you right-wing bigot.
Well, there you go.
Now you've drawn the lines, and I was actually willing to draw it before pedophilia.
Well, and this was right on the heels of everybody on the conservative side being called, you know, stupid or like, oh, that's a conspiracy theory, thinking that normalizing pedophilia was kind of that next step.
Right.
You know, some people, you know, wrongly brought it up in certain cases.
But in other cases, we're like, well, what is next?
Like, if you guys continue down this line of crazy, like what's going to happen?
And by you guys, I mean particularly folks in the media.
We see what we see now coming from Hollywood.
We see people like Roman Polanski, potentially Harvey Weinstein, people like Kevin Spacey.
You see Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, these people all coming out talking about how it's one of the biggest open secrets in Hollywood, and these are the people who are sort of at the forefront of spearheading change.
And of course, Salon is very Hollywood-friendly.
They get all kinds of puff pieces and celebrities who speak to them there, which is Amazing to me.
We go, well, hold on a second.
These people don't seem to have a problem with it.
These people, meaning people in the entertainment industry.
We could see it coming down the pike.
Then I think they were all removed, weren't they, Reg?
Yeah, eventually Salon removed the articles.
Very proud of their stories.
Yeah, I think it was just an advertiser thing.
I assume people became uncomfortable.
It was like a year later.
And it's comparable.
They wanted to pull ads from a website that supported pedophilia not one but three times.
An advertiser on YouTube wanted to pull because I called someone Mexican.
That's true.
I mean, those are not roughly equivalent.
Never mind.
That was the point of the joke, Jeremy.
It was sarcasm.
It was sarcasm there.
I was trying to play off of it.
You know, I made the worst decision after the stream.
What did you do?
You were telling us.
Coronavirus.
I was with Johnny Boy, and I was like, you know, I hadn't eaten.
I get nervous, and I can't eat before live shows.
And so afterwards, I was like, you know, I'm kind of hungry.
Let me see what they have at Quick Trip.
And I got one of the taquitos on the hot rollers.
I entrusted myself to the sneeze guard.
Well, to be fair, I took extra precautions.
I asked him, I said, okay, which one of these have been put out most recently?
Because it was late at night after the stream.
And I picked the one that was furthest in.
So the sneeze guard could do most of its sneeze guarding.
So the one that was placed two days ago.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
No, they're pretty good about it.
Cause they move a lot of quick trip.
You ever had their, their Buffalo chicken taquitos?
Oh my gosh.
They're not good for you, but they taste, they're delicious.
I don't even eat fast food, but those are the things that I eat.
I mean, you know that's not fast food.
That's fastest food.
Literally, there's no drive-through.
It's just from roller to mouth.
You might as well just order a side of dysentery.
Well, you know, I'm fine.
I feel great.
I feel tired today, but I feel, you know, my intestines feel like a million bucks.
So maybe that's all I needed was a little bit just to block me up.
We'll check back with you in a few days.
Just cheese and processed whatever that layer is.
It's not bread.
I don't know what it is.
Whatever it is, it's just like wax paper.
Was it tasty?
Oh my god, was it tasty?
Yes!
I know, that's what I'm saying.
That's the hard part.
That's the problem.
I love Quick Trip.
Quick Trip is my favorite place in the world outside of home.
Hey, are you surprised that wine guy over there doesn't eat taquitos?
I do eat taquitos, just not from Quick Trip, typically.
I don't even know if they're taquitos, honestly.
They call it, but we're getting very loose with terminology.
Wait, wait, wait.
Is it like in parentheses, right?
It's not even a real taquito.
It's a taquito.
Actually, I don't think I get the taquitos.
I get the buffalo chicken.
Anyone out there who goes to Quick Trip, you know what I'm talking about.
It's just like a paste, because it's a tube of the chicken and cheese are just one and the same.
Oh, wow.
They've just sort of melded together into this artery-clogging piece, well, roll of heaven.
Nice.
It's terrible.
There's nothing good about it.
I guessed wrong.
I said Jack-in-the-Box and you said you made a bad eating decision.
That's right.
I said Jack-in-the-Box would have been a far superior decision.
Jack-in-the-Box would be child's play compared to getting a taquito on a roller.
I thought you were going to say you were going to go to the Halal Guys.
Got some of that hot sauce.
Everyone knows the Halal Guys stories.
They're good.
I used to do Halal Guys all the time until I just realized my mouth is used to spice, but your stomach can't take it.
And it tastes so good.
It was burning a hole.
Oh my gosh.
It tastes so good.
But then that, I don't mean, it's not the kind of thing where you just go to the bathroom like, oh, it's like,
aaaaaaah, you know the kind of thing where it's like, when you, like people can see in your walk.
It's an event.
Like, oh yeah, halal guys.
Yeah.
The halal walk.
It's tough.
The halal walk.
So yeah, Reg came to us there, and then you worked part-time for us.
Yeah.
And then you, I don't want to reveal, but you worked yourself out of a job.
Yeah, yeah, basically.
I was in, yeah, teaching.
He was a professor.
And they said, put all your lessons on tape.
Yeah.
On tape, yes.
He has on tape, yeah.
Put all your lessons on beta.
And shifted to a more online format.
Right, yeah.
LaserDisc.
What would they have done if you said, no, I'm not going to record this?
Would they have just brought in someone else?
Yeah, probably.
Oh, probably.
So then he calls me, he's like, I need to talk with you about something.
He's all nervous.
Oh no, he's going to get tenure.
And then they were like, hey, we're firing you.
And I said, oh, yes.
But inside it was... And then I gave him a raise and he came to work for us full time.
And, um, you know, I just, thank God he's on our side.
What's your squat?
637 was an odd number that I worked to.
Yeah.
How did you get to the 37?
One pound collars.
Weighted collars.
You get those really beefy in powerlifting, the metal ones that you bolt on.
I like using those.
The plastic ones are nice, but I dumped quite a few squats because I would work without a spot or so.
For someone very smart, it sounds like you engage in some stupidly risky behavior.
No, no, no, not really.
If you got the power rack there, and you are willing to dump it, then you're pretty safe.
Yeah, you know, you're actually pretty safe.
A lot of people don't realize, if you don't have the power rack there, if you just dump a squat and go to the board, you're fine.
The dangerous thing is putting collars on and benching by yourself.
That's the danger, because if you're bench pressing and it gets stuck, If the collars aren't on, for people out there,
this is a safety message, and a lot of people don't realize this, they think it's safer to put collars on,
not if you're benching, because if it goes down and you can't get it up, if the collars aren't on,
you can just tip it, the weight goes off, otherwise it just sits in your diaphragm
and continues to sink, and sink like that guy in Jungle Book.
Yeah, if you tip it, the bench is not usually high enough to get out from underneath it.
Yeah, yeah.
I've had to do that before, and just do like a sit-up with like 315.
And roll it down on your hips?
Yeah.
I've done that one time.
Nice ab crunches.
You did it once before?
I did that one time, yeah.
I had to roll it down.
It was a dumb idea.
That is a horrible idea.
I wasn't benching that much, I'd just done so many reps I was burned out.
What were you about to say there, Wade?
I was just going to say, sometimes I put too much mayonnaise on my sandwich, and it comes out the other side, and it gets on my lap.
I have that exact same situation.
Except in my case, my wife puts mayonnaise on my sandwich.
I thought you were married.
Nudes.
You're doing marriage wrong, Wade.
He bought the cow and she doesn't even put the mayonnaise on the sandwich.
You're sounding like you're talking through a tin can.
Yeah, I got a different mic today.
Oh, okay.
Not going to use it.
It's a penalty box mic.
What are you going to do?
You're just not going to talk?
That's fine, now that we know.
This will be the last time you'll see it.
Wait, hold on.
Isn't this his job?
No, I think he gave his mic to Redshift.
He did sacrifice.
He gave his mic to Mr. Twin Sitter.
We do have a guest question.
We do have a guest question.
Please, dear God, somebody help.
Thank you.
Here we go.
Aloha, Crowder and crew.
This is Kawika from way out over in Hawaii.
I'd just like to send my aloha to all you guys and thank you all for what you do.
My question for you gentlemen and Too Cute Maddie if she's there is out here in Hawaii I work at one of the largest homeless service providers and as a part of my job I deal with a lot of a lot of strife you know a lot of people at their lowest point and it weighs down on you Spiritually, mentally, physically.
And I know you folks similarly have to deal with a lot of stress and strife and negativity coming your way for what you all do.
And I was just hoping you all could share with us some things that you might do to re-energize yourself, to recharge your mana, as we say out here in Hawaii, your power, your inner strength, yeah?
Both spiritually and mentally, especially.
It's just so bizarre to see a clearly, like, Polynesian Samoan with a Steelers.
Troy Palomalu.
No, no, no, Troy Palomalu.
Yeah, so many Samoans have played for the Steelers.
Oh, is it?
Well, anytime somebody from Hawaii ends up on an NFL team, like, everybody just celebrates that team.
They just become instant followers.
Huge fans of Alabama, Tua Tagovailoa, and then Troy Palomalu was an amazing safety for the Steelers.
Because Samoans want to go to Pittsburgh.
No, probably not.
They just want to make millions of dollars.
It's like one of their people made it in this big sports league on the mainland kind of thing.
So it's a big deal.
What's the difference between Polynesia and Samoa, by the way?
Well, Polynesia is the larger area and Samoa is part of Polynesia.
Okay, so all Samoans are technically Polynesian, but not all Polynesians are Samoans?
I mean, I guess, but if you were Samoan born in the United States, you'd be Samoan without being Polynesian.
I mean, I wouldn't try and draw any distinctions there.
You didn't answer me.
He's running for office next.
It was a terrible question.
I don't understand!
Does anyone else know?
If you're born in Samoa, though, you are Polynesian.
Yeah.
Broadly speaking, yes.
But they wouldn't consider themselves Polynesian-American if they're born, say, in Pittsburgh.
They would consider themselves Samoan.
Yeah, for sure.
You would identify as Samoan.
It's like saying, you know, do you consider yourself American because you're from America?
You specifically say you're American because you're from the United States.
Not just if you're Canadian, you wouldn't say, well, I'm from North America, so I consider myself... I think it's kind of like what happened with Jews.
There's a religion and there's also an ethnicity.
And so I think with America, when we say Polynesians, we're talking about a race of people.
Not necessarily a geographic region.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if Polynesian's a race or not, but, I mean, Samoan, I mean, I think the Samoan people themselves identify themselves as either a race slash culture with a long history, as opposed to being like, just more broadly, if you go 30,000 feet up and say, oh, everyone in Polynesia, but there's all these little different groups or islands or cultures within that area.
Are there any Polynesians who don't look terrifying, like they could kill me?
No, all of them, whether they look it or not, could kill you.
They could kill me.
Yeah, they do that scary thing with their teeth.
Let it never be said that genetics don't factor in.
I have never met a Samoan who didn't have huge legs and was incredibly strong.
Big guys.
Big guys, the Samoans.
Yeah, I only knew one Samoan who was a friend of mine.
He just told me, like, this is just how it is.
This is how it is.
There are some people, you know, if they stop training, they go up in weight.
Right.
And there are some people, if they stop training, they go down in weight.
I've never met a Samoan who was anything other than huge.
Yeah.
And listen, I don't mean, I mean, people might say that's racist, but, oh well.
It's a benefit.
I think it's racist.
As far as, no, it's a, it's a, one of the best fighters ever was a guy named Mark Hunt.
And he was, they call him the Super Samoan, but he's in New Zealand.
I think that, that kind of fits, right?
Yeah, I know, but I'm just saying it's weird for Americans.
I don't know.
It is.
I don't care about the rest of the world until one of them competes on our team.
You know, for me, I don't know about you guys, I recharge and I appreciate, by the way, thank you for doing all the work that you do with the homeless shelter.
What we deal with is different, you know, people hate us.
What you deal with as far as a strife is seeing the pain and suffering of others.
I mean, we see that too, but we're pretty fortunate in that we have a lot of supporters, so we can kind of focus on that.
Or in my case, I don't get to read any of the comments because I've been banned from them here in the office.
Like, just don't read them, Steven.
They're like, it's not really helpful.
But for me, I know that I recharge alone.
Like, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm someone, I'm very much an introvert.
Yeah.
And my wife is that way too, which is great, because my brother and his wife, they have to do everything together.
Whereas my wife and I, it was actually just not that long ago, we said, hey, I just want to make sure I don't feel guilty.
And my wife's like, I don't want to feel guilty, but like, we can just live like two single people for like four hours a night.
Where she's like, I just read.
She just likes to read with a book.
Yeah.
And that's not an interactive activity, but there are a lot of people.
I mean, Wade, you're that way.
You read a book.
I do like reading.
So do you go off on your own when you read typically or do you just read in the living room?
Usually my wife and I just sit and read.
Like I read on the couch.
She usually reads in like a rocking chair that we have.
Okay.
We read together.
So you're Benjamin Button because you must be 95.
Pretty much.
I am.
You still use books?
Yeah, I don't, you know, I wish I could say that I read books a lot, but I don't read books as much anymore, because when I read, it's usually news articles, or someone sends me a book that I should read to prepare for this show.
So if I do read books, it's more so kind of informative, like a book, right now I'm reading through this book on the history of cigars, or a book on sort of the history of coffee and its relation to capitalism is pretty interesting.
That counts.
I don't read them that often.
I used to be, so before YouTube, before the internet, I would read two, three books a month.
My wife is a speed reader.
She must read at least five books every single month.
Dang. Wow.
She reads an insane amount of books.
It's good to read.
For me, I spend a long time, I get into sort of these little,
I get almost borderline obsessive.
I become a maven of things.
So, like right now I've been watching old fight videos, old boxing matches without the commentary.
Because I'm like, man, everyone thinks this about this fight, so let me watch it without commentary and just through fresh eyes.
And I watch something and I go, man, there are some fights that people were robbed, but you turn on the commentary and you realize, Oh, and Muhammad Ali is getting the best of this!
He's literally bleeding out his face and telling his corner to cut off the gloves because he's done.
So I've been doing that lately.
And then sometimes I'll have somewhere I'll go through a series.
So I tend to watch things.
I realize that when Hopper passed, it was one of those things that was so hard to deal with where watching a film is more powerful for me than a drug.
Like a good immersive film gets my mind off of whatever it is that's sort of bothering me.
So I do that.
That's kind of my way to recharge.
And as far as with my wife, I'm good with quality time.
I don't know about you, but I don't really need to talk.
I talk so much all day that I don't really want to talk a ton when I'm home.
I just want to be in my wife's presence.
So being in her presence, but she can be reading and I can be watching something, is sort of how I recharge.
I know it sounds really boring.
But I guess, too, sometimes people, they have hobbies to help them recharge.
I mean, my hobbies are, like, Brazilian jiu-jitsu or going to the gym.
Like, these are intense things, and my body can't take it so much.
So when I'm done working or doing that, it's just as low intensity as possible.
And it's usually watching something.
And that's why I will re-watch.
I've seen Larry Sanders at least three times all the way through.
Oh, wow.
Same thing with Seinfeld.
I've probably seen The Edge at least ten times.
I don't have a problem re-watching things.
Yeah, me either.
So I think that's something that I've fallen into over the last years, watching more and more of the same stuff that I've watched before.
Because you're right, it does allow you to kind of disconnect a little bit.
But before that, it was cycling and golf.
Like, I chose physical activities.
Golf is not that strenuous, obviously.
Like, you do get tired by the end of it to a little degree, but not a lot.
It is afterwards when you have to blow all the guys in the locker room.
Yeah, that's a very difficult—it just depends on how many people are there, you know, when you finish.
Uh, so those were great for me because you get, it's, it's so different from what you do.
And I think that's what a lot of people try to find is you read all the time for work.
And so going home and reading more probably isn't always sounding like a lot of fun to you and something that gets you away from the norm.
And so for me, going out into nature, instead of being in an office, either on the road and cycling or on the golf course, it's nice.
It kind of lets you relax a little bit, get out of your normal rhythm and just kind of recharge.
Well, I find I recharge best, too, when I go up to the little lake house up north, and that's where I'm outside a lot.
I might be chopping some wood.
I'll go to my uncle's cidery and just help him pick apples, help him mash apples, make the cider, have a cigar, be outside, but I don't really do that so much here because I don't have... It requires a day for me to do that.
It requires me a couple of days.
Do you guys find this, sometimes, that when you get on vacation, you're so much more tired the first few days?
It takes a while to get into that rhythm, to come down?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, sometimes that'll happen where it'll take me a little while to...
And I realize that's what happens after we do live streams at night.
I don't fall asleep until like two or three because I've got to be on, and it's hard to bring that down from going on.
We've got a level of the energy that goes in, the tenseness that you have to have during your body, in your body, in your mind, to be on all the time or talking to people or running things or whatever it may be, that when you get to vacation, you're like, okay, is this the time to relax?
Okay, I'll relax a little bit more.
Right.
Okay, now day three.
Maybe you're really relaxed.
You're right, yeah.
You know, one thing about the question, when I heard the question, I heard two different things.
There's the, what I would call the, like, mini escape stuff, right?
Like, man, I just gotta get my mind off stuff.
I just want to clear my mind.
Maybe I'm reading, maybe I'm gonna watch a show that I like, or a movie.
I play video games sometimes, or read, or watch TV.
Any of the three of those.
You play video games?
I do.
My lawyer plays video games?
Absolutely.
YouTube's gonna get it!
Everything!
But then there's a different level, and I think one of the things that the question asks about is, you know, he's facing in his daily life a lot of just downhearted situations where you're really bummed for people, for life, and for society.
And some of the things, you know, a lot of folks will turn to God, they'll turn to their religious communities or their church families.
I think a little bit of that, though, is when you hang out with your own family, right?
Like, even if you're just there in those moments when you're reading together, those other things, but finding some other way to remember that life is not just that small bad situation that you're seeing day in and day out.
And you hear this from other people who work in hospitals, especially in ones that are state-funded.
They just see bad situation after bad situation, and they start to think that this is all the world has to offer.
Right.
And so, getting outside of that, and that could either be watching a documentary about something you've never seen before about, you know, science, or travel, or the world, and remembering- Mini-horses.
Mini-horses!
It's a horrible industry.
It's horrible!
Very abusive.
I watched a documentary on it.
But they're so cute!
I know!
Dirty money?
Is that- But they're not treated cutely!
Yeah.
Apparently they taste like shit.
Isn't that what that's about?
Huh?
Yeah, something.
No, I think you're right.
And I will say this, you know, sometimes people say like, oh, God is love, and they use it in this sort of just abstract way.
But I will say, as far as recharging, I don't know about you, but I never feel closer to God than in my prayer time where I'm just being grateful.
That's always where I feel like I really connect.
I feel like it's God going like, hey, look, look at this.
When I actually just go through gratitudes to the point where I know, you know, you should do more than just praying and being grateful.
But sometimes I'll just sit for 20 minutes or 30 minutes like, thank you.
I'll just be like, thank you so much for not even necessarily specific things.
Sometimes I'll go through specifics and I'll do something like, man, thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you, because I realize what I could have.
I could realize, you know, what my situation could be like.
Or if I'd have turned left when I actually turned right.
You know, if I zigged when I should have zagged.
Right.
I think gratitude really does put things in perspective.
And I know that sounds like a bumper sticker, but I do think it's something that people need to be mindful of.
And I think people, a lot of times, go into your point, Bill, you just need a change of perspective.
No matter how difficult your situation is, there are plenty of positive things going on in your life.
Maybe your job is not the best in the world, but you probably have a roof over your head, or you have family.
You know his job's not the best in the world.
No, I know.
Don't offend me!
Not him, not him specifically.
I'm half amazed he's not coming in here doing sword swallowing every morning.
You haven't seen him doing that?
You know, but people do need to, uh, yeah.
Uh.
People, people do need that kind of uplifting, especially if you are,
you're volunteering in one of those fields that just is emotionally draining.
I worked at, in prayer care and education at one of the churches that I was at previously.
And it wasn't anything like volunteering and homeless shelters and things like that.
But we did have a lot of very serious, very difficult situations
that we had to walk people through.
And so occasionally you just needed, like you needed a break from that.
Like, you can't just make your whole life about that because, like you said, you lose perspective on the beauty of the world, you lose perspective on how many good people there are out there because you see bad all the time, or how many people are doing well because you see people that are doing poorly.
So I think getting outside of that and having a church group that you can go to or be a part of, a faith, is super important because you're gonna find that there very easily most of the time.
It is super important.
I will say that for people out there, and then I want to go to Reg and see what he does to recharge and then we have to go, but for people out there who aren't necessarily involved in a community or let's say you're housebound right now because you're quarantined, everyone can sit.
People talk about transcendental meditation or doing yoga.
None of it, none of it will clear your head and change your outlook as much as just sitting and just, I know we say, use the term doing gratitudes, just sitting and thinking about what you're grateful for.
Yeah, and for me like I'm super boring outside of work because we work such a high-intensity job where I really I yearn for the kind of normalcy that a lot of people have like for me nothing makes me happier than going home having a beer I play some tug-of-war with Betty listen to my wife and how her day went and then she makes a wonderful meal often or sometimes we order in and I'll just watch like the latest episode of curb and that is to me and That's as good as it gets.
I've gone to Hawaii.
I've gone to Europe.
I've stayed at some of the nicest hotels in the world.
Not on my own dollar, but other people pay for it.
Nice with the bill.
I raid the hell out of the mini bar.
It's not any better.
That's about as good as it gets for me.
Our lake house, sitting there with my wife, with my dog, with my family.
People are like, I want to travel.
I don't.
I really don't.
I'm satisfied with that.
So one quick point before we get to Reg, which is, notice that the person who asked the question is in Hawaii, and how many people who would say, man, if only I could go on a vacation to Hawaii, or I could only do this, there's a little bit of it that comes from the heart, and you gotta find, you know, it comes from the inside, right?
The circumstances are there, but a little bit comes from how you interpret it.
Thanks, Mr. Pixar.
It's like the Polar Express.
You like that?
It's been in you all along.
It's all inside of your heart.
But just remember, that's what it is.
Just because you think the grass is greener on the other side, sometimes you've just got to work on your own lawn.
I want you to do that in court one time.
I want you to say, I rest my case, your honor, but if you keep me in your heart, I'm never truly gone.
What makes you think I haven't already done it?
All right, Reg, how do you reach out?
I mean, that's the thing about platitudes and cliches is that there's truth to them.
That's why.
Sometimes.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the time.
Actually, I was thinking about my wife.
She works in the pro-life industry with counseling women on the sidewalk.
She's strong as hell, too.
His wife is really strong for a woman.
I do mean for a woman, but for a woman, she's insanely strong.
Sorry, continue.
315 deadlift, but yeah.
So, she deals with a lot more difficult stuff than I do.
She's got a great personality, too, by the way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, but when you see, she talks to these women, you know, that are going into, like, abort their children, and a lot of times, you know, when we talk about pro-life things, we think, oh, it's about making this rational argument about personhood, but most of the women will say to her, yeah, I know it's killing my kid, but this is my only option, and she's trying to provide other options.
She works with health care centers and things like that.
But to see those women just go in there, the majority not success stories, you know, not
the story of someone being saved or a life being saved.
I think what helps her recharge is, you know, going back and thinking on the few times that
she was successful.
And I think that's what you've got to go back to is realize there's a ceiling to you can't
save everybody.
It's just impossible.
And one of the sort of cliched stories that my wife actually draws strength from is the classic one with the beach where there are starfish washed up.
And there's a little kid throwing them back into the ocean trying to save them before they're fried in the sunlight.
And he eats the starfish.
Yeah, no, no, no.
But I mean, the way it goes is some old guy comes up and says, hey, you know, you can't save all these.
And the kid said, but at least I saved some.
And I think at the end of the day, that's what you have to be okay with if you are working in, you know, trying to help people that, just to focus on the ones that you were able to help.
And you know what?
I will leave with this.
Sorry, Garrett, I want to, well, sorry, we can't have you in on this one right now.
You got to just jump in, son!
You gotta jump in.
He's too friendly.
He plays video games.
He's too friendly, but Garrett will throw- That's not all I do.
I know.
Quarterback Garrett will throw down when the time comes.
Go back and watch that try to confront.
That's right, baby.
I will tell you this, like, it almost brought a tear to my eye.
My wife and I were watching the rushes and we saw Garrett like... And I was like, oh my gosh, he's just, he's just a little jumping bean of hate.
I was waiting for it, it never came.
I know.
I love you.
I love Garrett like a little brother.
I mean it.
He's like a little brother to me.
I'm not looking you in the face because I don't want to cry.
I don't want you to cry.
Stop being a bitch, pussy.
So...
I was saying, don't look at me!
One of the toughest things I remember that we had to do was when we did that video in Colorado, which is kind of another point, right?
Like James O'Keefe, and I love him, but he has like six months to release a video.
We did this amidst, we pre-taped shows that week.
It was like a week.
Yeah, exactly.
We went to Colorado where this woman was about to have an eight month, what was it, 34 weeks?
34 or 36.
34 or 36 weeks.
And she was going in to get an abortion, and we were all just struggling so much because we wanted to stop her.
But we also had to be true to what we were doing, which was exposing this abortion clinic and exposing the kind of abortions that go on.
So we had to think, can we stop her?
We probably can't at this point, because we would have been breaking the law had we actually gone in and tried to intercede.
And we said, you know what?
Let's just keep praying about it.
Let's release this video and try and stop all of the other potential abortions from happening.
And then, I will say it was a total God thing.
We found out that she couldn't go through with the abortion, in large part because of speaking with the women who went in with us.
And it could have gone either way.
I'm not saying that God owed us that, but it was really hard.
It was really hard.
I don't remember who was with us there.
Were you with us?
I was there, yeah.
Remember we were sitting there like, what do we do?
What do we do?
It was a moving moment knowing that there was somebody in there at such a late pregnancy thinking about doing that thing, and then luckily we had those two girls and they were able to talk her down.
Yeah, but they weren't, you know, they didn't go in and say, leave.
Don't think they just talked to her and sort of educated her.
Went through the steps.
But that was a tough one because we said, well, maybe we can't, it was a kind of a flip of that reg where we said, maybe we can't save this baby, but we can, you know, we know that millions of people will see this and we can save thousands of other babies.
And we were fortunate enough where, um, you know, it's tougher because that's a personal connection.
You want to save that baby even more because you've met her, you've heard her story.
She has three other children.
And instead, um, you know, God was, uh, God was, uh, smiling down on us and none of them, uh, well, I don't know how many people didn't have abortions, but we know that lady didn't.
Thank you so much.
We appreciate it.
I got a little serious here.
Don't look at me in the face.
And don't look at me in the face with your lifeless eyes.
Lightoffcutter.com slash ask.
Send in your topics.
And this is great.
This is what it is.
It's non-political.
It's fun.
I love having Reg here.
We're going to do another one next Ash Wednesday.
We'll see you tomorrow with the live Super Stream.
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