All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 28, 2024 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:16:12
Trump, Faith, and Peterson Academy: Mikhaila Fuller on Reconciliation and Cultural Change – SF503
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Thank you.
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you awakening wonders, and welcome to our Thanksgiving special.
What are you thankful for this year?
Are you thankful that the world appears to be changing?
Are you thankful that the limitless Lord of Light is abundant and resplendent in your life?
Are you thankful for the result of the election?
Or are you...
Himmel-like in a corner, quaking and quivering.
If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be available for the first 15 minutes there.
Then we'll be exclusively streaming on our home.
Rumble.
Not only my home, but the home of Dr. Disrespect.
And it's difficult to imagine that a medical man would make a false diagnosis when it comes to choosing the best platform.
Or perhaps you're a member of Bongino's army.
Thankfully...
What is that thing that's in Turkey?
There's some drug, isn't there, in Turkey?
People always point out every Christmas season, all the reasons you fall asleep after your Thanksgiving is because Turkey's got this thing in it.
Someone will tell you it today.
I bet it now.
Let me know in the comments and chat if that's happened to you already.
Well, I'm very thankful this year that we're having a conversation with Michaela Fuller, formerly Michaela Peterson, who knows what it's like to ride the rollercoaster of being dragged into public life because of her famous father, the sort of unprecedented and peculiar professor, Jordan Pearson, who is my friend, whom I adore on a personal level, and who I admire very deeply.
Now, imagine, like, when you become a famous person, you get to know famous people's kids and stuff.
Like, I know some of the, like, I know people that have done really well at being the child of a famous person, and other people are destroyed by it.
It's, um...
You know, like as a father, I've got kids.
That's actually the prerequisite for any father.
And it's like I want to live my life, their life, in advance of them.
Like I'd like to walk in front of them like someone at a pageant holding a staff aloft for a forthcoming monarch.
Putting petals upon their path so that they never encounter horror.
But you will encounter horror in the world.
Because this world belongs to Satan.
It's a brilliant conversation.
We had it like, it was like yesterday or something, but I had the conversation.
And we started off talking about politics and stuff like that and culture and culture war and diet and Bobby Kennedy a little bit.
But then she told me that she's Christian.
And the conversation...
Really took a turn, I would say, for the better.
And it became pretty fascinating.
And I learned something pretty important from Michaela.
She runs her dad's businesses.
She's got her own podcast.
She's a married woman and a mother.
But when we started talking about Christianity, I really recognized that she was practicing Christianity at depth.
What I mean by this is whatever it is you believe in, let me know in the comments in chat.
I don't know if you're an atheist or you're a Christian or you're a Jew or you're a Muslim or you're a Scientologist.
In a way, I pray for you that you become a Christian because that's what I believe in, but I also don't think I know more than you about anything.
I've never felt that about people.
What I would say is, if it's not being practiced in the present moment, it's not being practiced at all.
It's the only place you can know God is in the present moment.
It's the only place that healing can take place.
Someone told me yesterday, it's in the present moment.
When I just talked about Christ and self-improvement, it really got to me.
So listen, we'll be on YouTube for about ten minutes, then we'll be exclusively On Rumble, our home.
And you should become an Awaken Wonder, particularly if you enjoy this conversation, because my conversation with Jonathan Paggio is amazing.
The break bread conversation that I had there, which is only available to our Awaken Wonder community members, is fascinating and intriguing.
And in fact, hold on a minute, do I have, am I going to be able to pull up an asset if I press that Stream Deck?
Well, I'll mess with our lives.
Yeah, well, anyway, have a look at this.
And so that's the problem of technology, is that it gives you what you want with infinite power, with increasing power.
But the problem is what you want is if it's perverted, then all the side effects of what you want, you didn't notice.
You hadn't thought about it.
You hadn't realized that there are side effects to what you want because you're not aiming in the right direction.
So now all the side effects start to manifest themselves and you're like, well, I didn't know.
Like, I didn't know that if I started, you know, like, you know, I love Elon for all intents of, you know, but Elon is hilarious because He's like, I'm going to start OpenAI, and I'm going to create the most powerful AI company in the world, but it'll be open source, and it'll be great, because it'll be open source.
And then he creates OpenAI, and it's the most powerful thing in the world, and he says it's the biggest single threat to human existence.
Me and Jonathan Pacho.
Absolutely fantastic.
Anyway, listen, this is a great conversation with Michaela Peterson.
I think you're going to love it and you're going to get sort of insights into what it's like to be a member of that family and that movement and some interesting insights into Christianity.
All right, without further ado, here's Michaela Fuller.
Michaela, thanks so much for joining me for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
It's so lovely to speak with you.
Thank you so much for inviting me on.
Firstly, should we start with what your new role is and what your new surname is?
Seems that everything's changing pretty radically around you.
Uh, it's true.
I mean, I changed my name.
I'm no longer a Peterson.
I'm now a Fuller.
I did get married a couple of years ago.
So that's a big change.
Although it was a much needed change.
So that's good.
I had a baby.
So now I have two.
So that was a change.
And also, your role within the organization that you run with your father is altered, and you're in particular responsible for what exactly now?
Oh my gosh, okay.
Well, we launched Peterson Academy in August this year, and that's gone splendidly.
So that's an online education platform, and we have professors from all over the world, like very interesting people teaching eight-hour courses at a university level.
We have 35,000 people on the platform now enrolled.
So that's been, I mean, that's what I've really been working on fully for the last three years, along with my podcast and kind of overseeing Dad's brand, although there are a lot of people involved in that now, thank goodness.
Yeah, and it's sort of in a way, it's a really interesting time to be sort of coming into excellence when it comes to new media projects, because the landscape's changing so significantly.
I've been very honoured and flattered to have been asked to participate in the Peterson Academy.
I know it's going really, really well, and I'm right, I'm excited to do something with you guys.
Will you, like, tell me how you think the landscape will change as a result of the election, in particular with what you're doing?
Well, I'm hoping, and this might be a pipe dream, I'm hoping Peterson Academy can work with the Trump administration.
So we'll see.
That might just be shooting for the stars.
But, I mean, the landscape's changed dramatically in the last...
Couple of years.
Like, I think we're going in a really good direction.
I'm positive about how things are going.
I think everybody in America has breathed a sigh of relief since the last election.
I mean, I was on threads the other day, which I never go on.
And I think threads is even shifting politically, which I never saw three months ago.
So I think things are heading in a good direction.
Yeah, it's changing pretty fast.
I mean, the potential for change seems to be increasing radically and dramatically.
And while, like a couple of years ago, if you'd have said, oh, maybe the Trump administration and the Peterson Academy can come to some arrangement, I'd have thought you were a lunatic.
But now I feel like, well, that could happen, actually.
Oh, the unlikely seems to be occurring rapidly.
So yeah, I mean, I hope so.
I think it would be good for people.
You know, the quality of the education we have is unparalleled, I think.
I went to a number of universities, so I kind of know what a middle-end university is like, and it is...
So far above that, it's not even comparable.
I'm wondering, like you I'm sure, if during the next 60 days before confirmations and inauguration, whether you think there's anything likely to disrupt it.
Is that something you've considered much, Michaela?
Definitely.
Definitely.
Even watching Trump go to the UFC fights and out and about, it's a little bit concerning.
Not that I assume he would be hiding in a cave until he's officially president, but I mean...
I don't know.
On the other hand, I think that there's such a tide shifting away from wokeism that even if something happened, I don't think wokeism would necessarily win in the end.
I hope nothing happens.
It would be a complete disaster for the world.
One of the things that I feel is significant is that it's clear now that you can't censor and control the conversation.
What appeared to be taking place broadly was that the role of the state and the advocates for the state's ideas in media were able to Completely control and shut down conversation around a variety of cultural and political issues, including health and war, to a degree where open discourse was impossible.
I suppose one of the things we can take from the recent election result is that's over.
Independent media and independent media commentators collectively have a greater reach than the legacy media.
So we're seeing things like pronouns being taken out of people's bios, people that really furiously advocate for that.
I saw that.
Yeah, yeah.
So in a way, like even the soft cultural symptoms of change are becoming really clear and evident, aren't they?
Even, I suppose, in sporting events, seeing people doing that, like Trump YMCA, should we call it a jig, is an indicator that it's no longer taboo to be supporting that movement.
I'd like to talk to you a little bit about how that's going to affect your content and how it's going to affect the kind of people that you ask to participate in particular in the Peterson Academy and the type of conversations you're likely to have going forward.
Do you think, Michaela, that there has to be some ongoing reconciliation or do you think that this is going to be a time that's defined by a kind of celebration of the annihilation of enemies?
Oh, you guys lost, woke lost, the Democrats lost.
It's Or do you think there's going to be an ongoing conversation that might even centre around reconciliation?
I think...
So I went to a Trump event in Phoenix, and a lot of what was mentioned there was reconciliation.
It wasn't we won.
It was we need to bring this country back together.
I know personally, I think...
And I'm Canadian, so I have a view from the outside, but because of what my family went through...
You know, I think my first feeling when I saw that Trump had won was like, yes, we won.
Like, down with wokeism and more of a probably...
Maybe it was a negative point of view.
Although I do think that elements of wokeism were, like, truly evil.
So it's hard not to feel like that.
But I think people are going to come together...
I hope.
You know, people on the very far left, maybe not so much.
But I think there's a lot of reconciliation.
And I do think people are relieved.
And I do think maybe six months into Trump's presidency, when people who are really far left realize that the country's not turning into a dictatorship, things will calm down.
But do you think that, in independent media, we should be participating in that reconciliation by the kind of guests that we have on, and the kind of alliances we have?
Like, do you think, for example, that you would have Don Lemon doing a course at the Peterson Academy, or Brian Stelter as a guest on your podcast.
Or if MSNBC folds up, would you be getting Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough on and having conversations with them and looking to find common ground?
Can you imagine personally doing that?
You know what?
So say for Peterson Academy to start with, we haven't been looking at people that politically.
Like people who come onto the platform aren't trying to teach in an ideological manner, whether that's right-wing or left-wing.
So we've already reached out to more left wing people to come in and teach something like screenwriting.
You know, a lot of the people in Hollywood are still very left wing and a lot of the best screenwriters are left wing.
And it was like, okay, politics aside, you're still a great screenwriter.
Would you come and join us?
And there's been some pushback on their side for coming onto the platform, which I think is actually going away because the platform is politically it.
I hope it's politically neutral.
I think it's politically neutral.
So for Peterson Academy, I don't think very much is going to change because we've already been trying to be kind of even-keeled.
And then as for my podcast, as long as the person's interesting, I'm not going to invite anybody on I'm going to have an ideological battle with.
I don't care enough.
Right, you can't be bothered to do that.
No.
Like, I don't need to convince them, you know.
They can keep living their life.
Yeah, sometimes I don't think I have the energy for an ideological battle either.
But what I do sometimes want to, I'm interested in, is reconciliation.
Because I don't, like anyone I suppose, I don't know what's going to happen in the next four years.
We sort of saw like a host of high profile figures saying they're going to leave.
leave and I suppose if you've like continued to say that Donald Trump's Adolf Hitler bringing about some new Reich then if you believe that then you would be obligated to leave but I suppose I don't feel like that's going to happen I don't feel like that's going to happen I suppose I don't feel like that's going to happen.
I don't feel like that's going to happen.
I feel like you're going to have a lot of people in metropolitan areas, parts of professional media class and other comparable industries that tend to be metropolitan, having to undertake some sort of investigation into why they had such an extreme reaction and position.
But then I suppose some of them might look at if Trump does say ban trans people from the military, if that happens, for example, are they going to see that as, you know, a justification and demonstration of what they were concerned about? a justification and demonstration of what they were concerned about?
Before we continue with the interview, we're going to come off YouTube, okay?
Not because it's particularly the sort of thing that will be censored, but because Rumble is our home, because we know there's a guarantee we can speak freely and open there.
So click the link in the description.
Join us over on Rumble.
I mean, I have no idea.
I don't even...
My political views are so far from that, it's hard to believe.
But I think if the entire culture shifts to more middle of the line, then...
And especially what you mentioned, mainstream media...
I don't think it's been nearly as negative as it was before the election.
And I guess they're being careful because maybe they don't want to insult the incoming president.
But I think it's falling out of style, you know?
And so even these people are like, ban trans people from the military if that does happen.
I don't think it's going to be cool, you know?
Cool like it was in maybe 2018. So...
I'm positive.
I think it's going to drop off and people are starting to see that, you know, this entire thing that's happened in the last six years has been pretty insane.
Mate, you, like, I've undergone, like, it seemed like your whole family underwent a kind of period of massive trauma and tribulation, like people getting sick and stuff, your mum, your dad, you, like, and...
I've, like, since the time that I've been involved with you lot, to put it in a euphemistic way, I've gone from being vegan to being, like, I'm eating meat, and eating meat quite a lot.
Are you still on that whole carnivore tip, and what do you credit to that diet and way of life?
Um, I mean, mostly I credit serious, serious desperation.
Like, there's no way I would have started only eating meat except I was so sick that I wasn't able to function.
And you can tell when you stop being able to think.
And if you can normally think and you stop being able to think, it's very frustrating.
And so I had periods of autoimmunity, mostly constant, where I was like, my brain's not functioning.
I know I'm capable of more than this.
Something's wrong.
Something's wrong.
And so I got to just eating meat because I knew that meat didn't cause any of these inflammatory reactions.
And I was like, OK, I'll just start with that for a period of time.
And if I can calm down my brain and these inflammatory reactions, I'll start incorporating in other foods.
And then, for whatever reason, I haven't been able to incorporate other foods.
So I'm still just eating meat.
I don't necessarily think the average person should just be eating meat.
But for people who have insane autoimmunity or psychiatric issues and can't get them under control, it seems to work wonderfully.
And there are finally studies coming out about it too, so I seem less like a quack, which is nice.
Do you think that with Bobby Kennedy heading up the HHS and the kind of appointments that are being mooted, there could be some, it seems like certainly in the areas of Big Pharma and Big Pharma's ability to dictate policy, there's going to be significant changes.
But do you envisage that there will be significant change when it comes to metabolic health and diet also?
And how important do you think that is?
I think, and I'm probably biased because of what I went through, but I think it's probably the most important problem America is facing right now.
If you don't have a healthy population, and especially if you have a psychiatrically ill population, your country is just useless.
Like, one psychiatrically ill person in a family can take out the family.
So it needs to be addressed.
And I have a lot of hope in If Bobby Kennedy can actually get in, if the Senate allows it, which it might.
I know Marty Makari, who's a brilliant doctor, has been nominated to run the FDA, which would be insane.
There's a lot of change coming, and I think it could be extremely positive, I hope, especially if they take a look at the food pyramid.
I think a lot of the reason people are metabolically ill in America is because they're not educated properly.
They don't understand that the processed foods people eat here are actually causing disease.
They just think they're bad for you, but they don't know what bad for you means.
It's like when people stopped smoking all the time.
It wasn't because there was legislative change necessarily, although that helped.
It was because their kids started bothering them because they heard that cigarettes cause lung cancer.
So if people just knew that mainly these hyper-processed foods and high-grain diets were causing metabolic disease, I think people would naturally be more averse to it.
But I mean, I'm unbelievably hopeful for the change Bobby Kennedy could potentially bring.
It seems so unlikely that that would happen, but it seems to be happening.
Just earlier today I watched Bobby Kennedy talking to Joe Scarborough 20 years ago.
And in that conversation, Joe Scarborough appears to suggest that he saw a connection between his own child's autism and the vaccination program.
It's pretty striking to see people that...
Now operating entirely different media and ideological spheres, even having a conversation to tell you the truth.
But it's also surprising that Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, those of you that don't know, morning Joe Scarborough, talking about that subject.
With some, I don't know, interest at least in the possibility that the US vaccine program could be contributing to a rise in autism.
He didn't make any scientific claims, but that's not something that he would say now.
It's not something that would be permitted on MSNBC now.
You wouldn't have RFK on MSNBC now unless to condemn him.
Now, although it seems like that, Oh, yeah.
Until real recently, now heading up a department that has three times the budget of the Pentagon, and probably, I hope, a better ability to pass an audit than the Pentagon, it seems pretty astonishing and surprising, and it can't but alter American life.
What I'm interested in, though, is how in this interstitial period, Michaela, like that we're going to move without it being like a sort of civil war in America from one set of beliefs that seem to have been undergirded by media compliance and Pfizer's control over news media in particular to...
What might be, in some ways, an entirely contrary perspective.
I don't know how this country, America, because me and you, we're both anglophonic but outside of this place.
I don't know how America's going to undertake That kind of change at the level of media, at the level of government, like, you know, that's going to be handled, of course, sort of, you know, within those circles.
But how the culture is going to make those changes.
But how is Morning Joe Scarborough going to carry on broadcasting and communicating, knowing there's been such a massive shift?
How do they deal with their audiences?
What kind of new spaces are likely to emerge?
I think, you know what, a lot of people on the left think Bobby Kennedy is going to come in and ban vaccines.
You know, I've seen this all over, like, threads, like I said, and more liberal platforms where they go, we're not going to be able to get birth control anymore, and vaccines are going to be banned, and disease is going to, you know, infectious disease is going to rise again.
And I know Bobby's Bobby Kennedy's plan is to actually do research to do proper studies on vaccinations and to give people the option.
So rather than forcing it on people, and I wouldn't say it's exactly forced, but it is kind of mandated if you want to go to school and things like that, give people the option to opt out.
So that's what I believe he's doing rather than just removing it entirely.
So I would assume people on the left will probably say, hey, we were just listening to the scientists.
We were following the scientists.
Now it turns out they were wrong, but we were listening to the science.
Now that the science has changed, you know, we'll listen to that.
I know some people who are really anti or pro-COVID, pro-COVID vaccination, that actually switched once they found out, oh, maybe the COVID vaccine isn't all its...
I don't know enough about vaccines.
I'm just paranoid about everything pretty much equally.
I don't know enough about vaccines to say, hey, there's a link there, but obviously something has gone terribly wrong or a number of things to cause chronic disease in America.
I'd probably mostly blame the food pyramid, but It would be nice to have some actual proper studies that aren't funded by the companies selling their products that we could trust.
That would be nice.
When you spoke at a Senate roundtable on the subject of health and nutrition, what in particular did you bring to the forefront, Michaela?
I was talking about, mine was pretty specific, like most of the people there who were, there was a, like one of my friends was a journalist who's very well studied, a number of really good doctors, they were mostly talking about processed foods and the link that processed foods have to chronic disease.
And then there was a Dr. Chris Palmer who was talking about ketogenic diets as a treatment for psychiatric illness.
And I was kind of in that category of, you know, there have been so many anecdotal studies on ketogenic diets and then the diet I'm on, which is just meat, which sounds extreme, but for autoimmune and psychiatric illness that we need to get some studies done.
It seems to address the problem so that people don't need medication and have no symptoms.
That needs to be studied.
So it was mostly a plea for like, let's take this seriously and let's run more studies.
Luckily, there are a number of studies, at least in the ketogenic diet area, being run on psychiatric illnesses and autoimmune disorders.
So it's coming.
But I mostly focused on that for like seriously, seriously ill people.
How are you going to continue to deal with what must be pretty extraordinary that you've been, by a set of rather unusual and in some cases tangential circumstances, dragged into a position that you can't really have anticipated?
Like, was it like, say, eight or ten years ago or whatever, you're the daughter of a professor at a university in Canada, and I guess she was, like, a lot younger then and maybe wouldn't have envisaged a future in social media or maybe any future at all, you tell me.
But, like, it must have been pretty abrupt and at points exciting and at other points terrifying.
Are you yourself making sense of...
How extraordinary the degree of change has been in your own life.
How have you managed to ride that all out, Michaela?
Because it must have been pretty crazy.
And even some of the trauma that I've already alluded to within your family, with all, you know, at least members of your family that I know.
Having experienced some pretty significant health problems, do you see that as something of a response to being thrust into the tornado of public life in a way that's pretty challenging, I would think, and unprecedented?
Superstar academics didn't really used to be a thing.
It's weird that the culture war that we've touched upon a bit earlier in our conversation has created this new dynamic And these new heroes or villains, depending on how you view that cultural conversation, how is it affecting you?
How are you dealing with it?
And how are you coping with being in a position you can't have anticipated?
I mean, I'm coping very well now that terrible things aren't happening all the time.
It was harder to cope when terrible things were happening all the time.
And it's hard not to link the sudden stress on my family and sudden kind of I guess.
Because it was pretty negative at the beginning.
It's hard not to maybe link that to the health problems.
But I almost think it was coincidental that the stress from dad's first online videos and the controversy that followed that...
I think that was coincidental, and it just all happened at the same time.
My mom got sick, my dad got sick, everything blew up online.
I think it was coincidental, and I think the way I've managed to reframe it in my mind, because for years I was just like, this is crazy.
And my dad felt the same way, like, this is crazy, what's going on?
Every day was just absurd, like, what's the likelihood of this day happening?
It's so terrible, but there's so much opportunity.
How does something so bad happen at the same time as such good things?
And I think I've reframed it through a Christian perspective that, oh, reality just makes a lot more sense if we're living in a spiritual world.
It was almost like a logical progression.
There are way too many coincidences happening right now, and I can't make sense of it.
I must not be making sense of reality in the right way.
And that's probably why I'm doing well.
I mean, that's definitely why I'm doing well now, along with the fact that things are going very well.
Peterson Academy is going very well.
My parents are healthy.
My family's Put together.
I'm married.
I have a new baby.
Like, I couldn't ask for more.
But I do credit restructuring my reality from a Christian perspective to, you know, trying to make sense of everything.
How did that happen?
Is it a response to all of the trauma and difficulties that you've described?
Have you become Christian?
Have you been baptized?
Are you a literal follower of Jesus?
Tell us about that.
Oh, definitely.
I got baptized in March.
And it didn't...
You know what?
I think...
I don't know why things happen when they happen.
Like, there have definitely been periods of my life...
My mom converted to Catholicism...
And when she was really, really ill, you know, she said she had this crazy experience where she had cancer, she was in the hospital, and she goes, I'm going to be better by my anniversary.
And she was on morphine at that point, and I kind of thought, well, mom's on morphine.
That's the explanation for that, because she said, I said, how do you know you're going to be better by your anniversary?
And she said, God told me.
And this is coming from, like, we never went to church or We weren't religious.
Dad had taught us the psychological background of the Bible, but we weren't religious.
So it was very out of the blue.
And then my mom suffered serious mishaps at the doctor.
Things were going really badly.
None of the surgeons knew what to do.
And her health turned around on their anniversary.
And no one could explain it.
And my mom had said that would happen, like, six weeks prior.
And when that happened, I was like, okay.
Like, the chance of that happening is very small.
And I believed her, right?
But that wasn't enough for me to get saved for some reason.
For me, that wasn't enough.
I don't know why.
I might have had some pride still associated with trying to understand reality through a more logical lens, I think.
Maybe that's what it was.
But...
I think there were a lot of things that led up to it.
All the coincidences, all the negative and terrible things that happened in regards to health.
My mom's cancer.
And then I met my husband who's a Christian and who's grown up a Christian and was part of a Christian family.
And I never met anybody like that before because I grew up in downtown Toronto and all my friends were, you know, I don't want to call them heathens, but like a little bit.
And so I'd never met anybody like that before.
And I started reading the Bible, and I believed, but I didn't fully believe.
I don't really know how to explain that.
Like, I'd read the Bible and be like, yeah, okay, I believe this, but I didn't believe down to, like, the very core of my soul until earlier this year.
And I think what switched is...
I think I was thinking I was a good person because I was trying to do good, and I didn't recognize...
Sin properly, like small sins, micro sins, like thinking people are being irritated with people or not having enough compassion.
I just didn't realize how I was contributing to that.
And I got shown that.
And I think God showed me that one day, which was like, it was almost like a shroom like experience of Basically, this is how you're sinning in the world.
This is why you're a terrible person contributing to evil, and it's people like you that killed Jesus.
I was in the bathroom, and I was just like, you know, but it was everything.
It was like, all those tiny little things you do that are bad, they're way worse than you think they are.
They're not just like tiny little bad things.
They're evil.
And I felt terrible.
And then the next instant, I felt this overwhelming sense of forgiveness, like, I don't know.
It was very stereotypical, I guess.
It didn't feel stereotypical to me.
It felt almost shroom-like, but better than that.
That's just the thing I can equate it to.
And I felt this overwhelming sense of forgiveness and love and compassion.
And I was like, oh, that's the Holy Spirit.
That's what I've been missing.
And that was March...
Um...
And then my entire...
My worldview changed.
Like, I was so close, but I wasn't quite there for about three years.
And then in March, I was just like, oh, I'm not looking at reality properly.
Like...
I don't even know if people can be good.
I don't know if people can identify what they're doing wrong to the smallest level without having the Holy Spirit.
You know, I don't think we're sensitive enough to recognize when we're doing evil, those little tiny things you can do unless you have the Holy Spirit.
Anyway, this year has been...
It's been a lot and it's completely changed my view of reality in a positive way, like a very positive way, though, like things make a lot more sense to me now.
Did any of that make any sense?
Yeah, it did.
I can understand the stuff you're saying about your husband and like how being exposed to literal Christians and Christianity will change you if you're open to it.
I was talking at a church yesterday in Jupiter, you know, in Florida.
Not the planet, the place in Florida.
My Christianity's not taking me that far yet.
And I was sort of saying, like, the Bible has been available for a while, and, like, how am I experiencing all of these revelations now?
What's happened and what's happening to me that suddenly things that were always available are making sense in an entirely...
I'm very interested in what you said, mate, about recognizing something like irritation being evil.
And I also want you to explain what you mean by the almost shroom-like experience in your bathroom.
I'm guessing you're saying that it felt kind of psychedelic.
But I wonder if you could describe and explain that to me.
A little bit more.
And how it changed your...
What you mean about...
Can you give me an example of the sort of thing that you might find irritating before that you now wouldn't find irritating?
And how, by your own reckoning, the Holy Spirit has gone to work on you and changed you.
I'm really interested in that.
So, I haven't talked about this a lot, so I'm not very...
I haven't woven it into a comprehensible story yet.
The reason I describe it as shroomlike is not to lower the experience.
It was the closest.
It didn't feel like how I'm normally seeing reality.
What I felt like happened was I got a zoomed out version of Of evil and good.
I don't even know how to explain this.
And was shown, like it wasn't from my own volition, I was shown how I was contributing to evil.
And by evil I mean even the small things.
So some of the examples I saw were like...
At this time, I'm usually swamped with work, and I really enjoy work, but enjoy work to an addictive level, which I don't think is necessarily unhealthy, but I really like working.
And so if somebody comes to...
If somebody I'm speaking to isn't fast enough or isn't getting their point across quickly enough, then my first reaction is usually like, I don't have time for this.
And it can be pretty...
I'm not usually outwardly aggressive, but inwardly I'm like, I don't have time for this.
Speak in bullet point form or get to the point or something like that.
And those kind of...
I don't know if that's pride.
Whatever it was, it wasn't good.
And I was just shown that even these small things that you do...
Are way worse than you think they are And I didn't know that.
I thought that you could get away with doing some kind of negative things as long as you were aiming towards good and trying to do good in the world.
So I think the reason that I didn't resonate fully with the Bible for so long was because I thought of myself as a good person, which isn't how Christians think of themselves, right?
They think of themselves, everybody, no matter how good you are, as somebody who needs saving and And I don't think I was thinking of myself as somebody who needed saving until March for some reason.
But like you said, I've been exposed to all of this for most of my life, especially through my dad.
Now, from a more psychological perspective, but I've been exposed to it.
My grandma was a Christian, and I scoffed at it most of the time for most of my life, thinking those are people who don't believe in evolution and think Harry Potter is evil.
Stuff like that.
I couldn't see it.
And even when I was reading the Bible, I didn't have it speak to me.
And there are things reading the Bible that now when I'm reading the Bible, I don't even remember reading.
You know, it was very strange.
Like there are sentences that pop out.
I'm like, that's crazy.
I know I've read that before, but I don't remember reading it before.
So, it definitely speaks to you differently.
It's been a very—and the reason I liken it to a psychedelic experience is because it's the, you know, it's such a shift.
It's such a shift in how you think.
I can't describe it in, like, an earthly way, I guess.
Not that psychedelics aren't earthly, but— And, well, that's about the best explanation I can give, probably.
It's been shattering, right?
I went from a completely rational explanation of reality to, oh no, spiritual reality makes more sense.
In my language, what you're describing in terms of that, that you reframed from being just acceptable and normal irritation to looking at it as a kind of reprehensible sin and actually evil,
in this sort of 12-step It seems to me that what you're describing, like what you literally said is you find people irritating if they're slow and in your own working environment you like to move things quickly.
I have that as well.
And I see it as impatience and intolerance.
Like, those are the sort of aspects of my nature that have risen up.
Like, I think I know how long people...
And I can see that's an aspect of pride, like you said.
Like, I think I know how long people should take to do things.
And actually, I'll extrapolate that exponentially.
Traffic shouldn't exist.
This isn't how people should run a country.
Like, everything.
I've got an opinion on all of this stuff.
But probably where it feels most toxic and...
Contaminating Michaela is an interaction.
Because I've gone through so many waves of such bloody obvious addiction, like being a literal heroin addict and crack addict and an alcoholic and then being so hedonistic and promiscuous, because those things are so easy to measure,
like to go from I'll have sex with anyone who wants to, to I'm married and I'm monogamous and I do not look at pornography and I do not stare and I notice the kind of stuff that I'm thinking and watch it,
you know, to then having to be as diligent and vigilant as you are plainly and watch out for am I in my interactions with people operating from a basis of non-forgiveness and those Two, it's not forgiveness like as in, you stood on my foot, I forgive you.
It's like, as you said, an unexpressed kind of aggression.
You said before, it's not like you're going to be, well, hurry up, I'm going to punch you in the face.
It's more just like your general tone and feeling, your frequency, maybe even your essence, is like voided of the presence of Christ.
Because you know, if Christ was in, you know, we think of Christ.
Christ, in significant moments in our life, like, how's Christ going to cope if you think you're going to die or someone you love's going to die?
Jesus, come on in.
But when it's like, Jesus, help me in traffic or in my dealings with my co-workers, you think, I don't need Jesus for that, I'll handle that.
But I'm actually handling it in a way that you're sort of diagnosing as pretty evil.
So like elevating that inner frequency up from the mire of human condemnation, which I'm increasingly thinking is worse than human.
It might actually, as you said, be Luciferian, satanic, absolute evil.
It ain't easy.
You said, like, that you've been going into the Bible and seeing it a bit different.
Well, I never really read the Bible before.
I only looked in it if I thought there was something in it that might be to do with UFOs.
That's the only stuff I was interested in.
Like, if it's like, that might be UFOs, man.
Like, that's it.
Angels or ladders or chariots of fire.
Is that UFOs?
That was my only interest.
You know, now I'm reading, like, the Bible in one year.
And all the time, it's not just the moral philosophy, but it's the impossibility of any moral philosophy if it's not undergirded by the type of universal principles that you can only have if God is real.
And I know secularists and atheists will say, I don't need God to be a good person, but that's not addressing C.S. Lewis's point, that we all know when we're doing something wrong.
We sort of know, and we've got a word for people that don't know, that's called a psychopath.
If you can't tell that you're doing something wrong or not.
And I wonder, mate, if off the top of your head, there's any verses or passages from the book that you have been struck by.
You know what?
I can pull some up.
And while I do that, I do want to clarify.
I still get irritated by slow people.
I still have the same problems I had before I recognized that that was a worse thing to do than I thought.
Especially if I'm not reading the Bible.
And I talked to my husband about this the other day.
If I skip a day or I'm not diligent, then I just kind of slowly devolve back into, like you were talking about, probably unforgiveness.
It's just easier to be more worldly if you're not really trying daily to not be.
So I don't want to give anybody the idea that I don't get irritated or anything anymore just because I got saved and baptized.
I certainly do.
But at least I think I have more guilt associated with it in a healthy way.
Like, I think I'm being tapped on the shoulder, being like, that's not the right way to behave.
That's a bad thing to do more than before.
And I do have Bible verses.
I have a bunch written down that spoke to me, actually.
Go on, then.
And thanks for clarifying that you're not claiming to be perfect, because I was thinking probably people that are working with you are in that room right now, like, having set up this interview, going like, well, she seemed pretty pissed off this morning, let me tell you, or whatever, you know, she can't get away with that stuff.
No, I just snapped at my husband about AirPods.
Yeah, me and all.
Airpods is going to ruin the world.
Not your husband, but people I'm working with.
How are we going to do this?
We want to feedback off the mic.
I don't even like wearing Airpods.
It's irritating to me.
Why did you snap your husband about Airpods?
Has he been using your ones?
Have you been cross-contaminating Airpods?
Because, you know, there's marriage and then there's Airpods.
No, no, it's worse.
It's worse, they're actually his, and I couldn't get them to connect to the computer.
And he said, where's yours?
And I was like, can you just help me connect yours?
Anyway, so yes, definitely not perfect.
Okay, do you want to hear some Bible verses that spoke to me for, you know, whatever reason?
Okay, I have Ephesians 10-20.
This one I liked a lot, which was, take up the armor of God because you're fighting evil, you're not fighting people.
I liked that a lot.
I thought it was humbling, you know?
That it's not your war, necessarily.
Because you walk around assuming that every battle you have in your life is your war, but if you think about it as a spiritual battle, it's like, it's almost a relief, I think.
So I think that spoke to me.
That's Ephesians 10 to 20. Yeah, what chapter?
Because I know that's the bit where you've got to put on the armour, put on the helmet of salvation and the shield of righteousness and the belt of truth and the good news on your feet.
And also isn't that, is that where he talks about dark power in high places and all that stuff?
This is, it was, finally be strong in the Lord and his mighty power.
Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.
You know, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rules, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
And I used to read that kind of thing and think that that sounds a little dramatic.
But then you experience some evil, and it doesn't feel that dramatic anymore, you know?
So I think I experienced enough, and I was like, that felt evil, you know?
And if you experience enough of that, it's like, you know, maybe that's just here.
Maybe that's real.
Hey, one of my Bible study teachers, the great J. John, one of his prayers is kind of like a visualization, Michaela.
So carrying on from where you just left us in Ephesians, it goes, you know, stand firm then with your belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith.
With which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
And, like, he, J. John, he, like, mimes it all out, you know?
Like, sort of pretends, like, putting on that armor.
And it reminded me of once, like, I used to do martial arts training, because I'm so tough, with this guy called Benny Erkides, who's, like, we used to be in Bruce Lee movies and stuff, you know?
And like, he used to get me to do a visual meditation technique where he's like, you imagine yourself going and you're, you know, listening to having bedtime stories from Jordan Peterson.
I guess you're going to get the image systems that he's deploying here.
Imagine yourself going into a woods.
Then you come out of the woods and you cross over a bridge across a river.
And then in a clearing, you see a house.
I want you to design the house in your mind.
Now see yourself going into that house.
Is it a palace?
Is it a shack?
Is it a wooden hut?
Then once you're in the house, see yourself putting on your uniform for the day.
Are you going to dress yourself up in your mind glamorous?
Are you dressing yourself up in armour?
And I used to think, this is mad this guy is getting me to do this.
When is it we're going to concentrate on punches or dodges or slipping or whatever?
Anyway, he's pretty amazing, that guy.
As a person who spent a lot of time in New Age stuff, like me, if New Age is anything, it's like you've got your own smorgasbord of the world's religions and ideas, whether it's crystals or the Bhagavad Gita.
You know, like a sort of thing, or astrology, or Jesus, and you're able to pick whatever you want from it.
It's really interesting for me to have committed to Jesus Christ, to have absolute faith in Jesus, respect for other people's traditions, but to know that my path is the path that He determines, for He died for our sins, that we may be forgiven and know eternal life.
And then to sort of learn techniques that are a bit Like it.
You know, like, you know, for example, what I told you today about Benny Oquidez.
He was a Native American or Native sort of Mexican, actually.
But, like, he sort of was from the tradition of, like, them kind of pantheistic Native American faiths.
And he, like, showed me a technique.
And now J. John, who's double-double Christian, showing me a technique that's based on scripture that has the same thing.
Like, you could use that as a meditation, couldn't you, Michaela?
You could go, like, right, I'm fighting against...
Evil power, you know, I'm going to put on this thing.
And like you said, it does sound a bit dramatic, but actually, the more you learn about how power operates, don't you start thinking, oh my God, that stuff's true.
So a few of my questions are, since becoming Christian, have you had to go, like, have you had to let go of a bunch of new age stuff?
You've mentioned psychedelics.
I don't know if you've had to let go of that gear.
And other techniques, breathwork, meditation, how do you incorporate it into your Christian life?
And do you think that stuff like I just said there, based on Ephesians 6, could be used as a sort of a visual meditation, as it were?
I mean, I think that could definitely be helpful.
I think probably...
Well, let me start at the beginning.
So did I have to drop a bunch of New Age stuff?
So psychedelics...
I used to use psychedelics quite a bit.
I always had good experiences with them, even with high doses, but I haven't used them since March, which isn't really saying a lot, because it hasn't been very long, and I didn't use them very often before that.
The last time I really used them was probably 2021 or 2020 or something like that, so I didn't really have to drop that, but I did.
I don't feel a need for it, but I don't know if I did previously either, so I don't know if I had to drop that or not.
That's still...
I'm not sure.
I don't feel a need for it.
Other New Age stuff, I wasn't really involved in anything.
I didn't...
I tried meditating in 2019, but I mostly just sat there and thought about work.
I wasn't very good at meditating.
So, I didn't really have to drop that because I was like, I'm just thinking about what I have to do today.
Like, I don't know how to make my mind stop working.
And I didn't have other techniques.
Like, the only other technique that I was taught from when I was a kid was to, like, write out my problems.
And...
And I haven't even really done that in years, so I didn't really have to change much.
And then since meeting my husband, this was three years ago, I had already been practicing Christianity in the way that I was reading the Bible, I was watching sermons.
I just didn't fully believe it.
So I didn't actually have to change much in my life.
Things just improved once I was like, oh, okay, I'm not, you know, the person I thought I was.
I'm not this, you know, I'm not a...
I was trying to be a good person, but I was like, okay, I guess I'm not a good person.
I am a person who needs saving just like everybody else.
And once that switched...
You know, things in my life improved, but nothing I think from the outside changed a ton, except maybe I'm not as, you know, unpleasant to be around.
I don't think I was particularly unpleasant before, but I'm probably more pleasant now.
So I didn't have to drop, I didn't have very many coping mechanisms.
I mostly drowned myself in work.
And has that changed?
I'm probably not as anxious about work problems.
Like, I'd like to say something more dramatic.
I don't feel the need to prove myself, I suppose, like I did before.
But I don't think outwardly a lot has changed.
It's more inward what has changed.
There's like a sense of calm I didn't have before.
Today I was listening to Father Mike Schmitz, who I really love actually, and he was saying the importance of the Mass, in particular him being a Catholic priest, is that at the Mass you're getting tooled up for the whole rest of your life, which is also an altar before the Lord, and that your work must be dedicated to God.
That God can't be, like, some sort of side dish.
God's got to be at the very centre of your life always, and that your mission and ministry must be practised through your work.
You know, that it can't be, do a bit of prayer, and now I'm going to get out there and be a total dick to everyone.
You know what I mean?
It's got to be, like, that you carry, you, Jesus Christ is at the forefront of your conduct in all of your interactions.
And so me, right, I do in the morning, I do cold plunge, and I read, like, there's a couple of devotionals, one called Jesus Calling, there's another one called Streams in the Desert, someone gave me, and I'm reading the Bible in one year.
That's how I'm going through the Bible mostly, although I pick up the Bible frequently also, but that's in addition to going through it in this one-day-at-a-time manner.
I also pray the rosary, and I do a lot of praying on my knees in the morning.
Including a bunch of set prayers, specific prayers of intercession and praise, and also then speaking in tongues, right?
I need this sort of time of worship throughout the day.
But I suppose that part of it, of transitioning from the holy hour, the commencement of my day, if my children in particular, my wife sometimes don't get in my way because I find it very hard to be around anybody...
You know when I'm trying to do that stuff and we bought a puppy like idiots while we're on the road not even in our home.
This puppy's a total.
My daughter was meant to look after it.
She's bored of it.
I don't know what it's gonna be like for her with men when she's growing up if this puppy's anything to go by.
So capricious.
She wanted that puppy so bad.
We got the puppy.
She's over it.
We've got to look after her, this little creature.
Now, anyway, so, like, what was difficult for me is that I feel like I'm found by the Lord and in communion with the Lord, like I feel Him and I see His face, Jesus Christ in particular, you know, the Heavenly Father being absolute.
Obviously, it's a little more difficult to conceptualize.
And the Holy Spirit, I invite the Holy Spirit and I pray that the Holy Spirit will enter every chamber of my heart and my being, every cell, every molecule of my beingness.
Then, though, In particular, like you, I think it's work that I find hard.
I don't know what it is.
I don't know if there's some fawn that needs to be removed or some fundamental change.
But if there is, Lord, I ask to be shown.
Because in work is where I feel sort of basically annoyed.
Basically annoyed is how I feel about doing it.
And I can only assume that there's information in that irritation.
How are you doing, mate, at...
You know, using whatever intimacy you feel with God in prayer and meditation, and can you tell us about what your prayer and meditation in the morning is like when it comes to the hard and fast business of dealing with human beings or traffic or feeling insulted online or whatever you have to deal with?
No, that's a good question.
I actually had...
So when I had this...
Well, when I got saved in March and had this complete shift in how I saw the world, there were a couple months where I thought, okay, what am I doing wrong?
Like, what am I doing that I don't think is wrong that's wrong?
And at first I thought, I thought, I thought of work, you know, pretty quickly.
Like, am I too, am I obsessed with work?
Am I treating it like an idol?
Is that where a problem is?
And am I dressing properly?
Like, I kind of went down every avenue of, like, what could I be doing that's, for lack of a better word, contributing the evil that I'm not aware of.
And so I was kind of hyper-aware for a while.
And...
I prayed about it.
I read the Bible.
It's like, maybe God will speak to me.
Maybe it'll become apparent, like, what I'm doing that's wrong.
And then I talked to my husband about it, too.
And I think what I figured out, and hopefully it's right, eventually was not everybody's built the same.
I think I was kind of going based off of what do I think a Christian, especially a Christian woman, looks like.
And I'm going based off of what you see online, where there's a lot of traditional women...
And those are people that, like, they stay at home, they have kids, they read the Bible, they homeschool their kids.
And I was like, I think if I do that, I don't think I can do that.
Like, I think that would, not that I don't love my children, but if I don't have some sort of outlet, I think, uh...
I think I'll feel terrible and it'll be very, very hard on me to make it as undramatic as possible.
If I don't have an outlet, I think I'll go crazy, right?
Even with Jesus, I don't think I'm built that way.
And so I started to talk to more people about it, being like, is that evil or am I just a different type of person and I need to do more things?
Not that...
I'm talking badly about people who are more traditional because there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But I think the conclusion I've come to anyway this far is maybe God wants me to build something and I'm building it.
Maybe that's why I have a year in there.
And that's not necessarily bad because after...
I'm kind of preying on this for, what, has it been, it's been like six months, like, is work a bad thing or not?
I think, I don't think it's a bad thing.
And I think what we're trying to do with Peterson Academy, too, and what I've been trying to do the whole time is like bring affordable education taught by people who aren't ideological for as low of a price as we can put it out there.
You know, and to introduce like we have some it's not a Christian platform, but we have Bishop Barron teaching a course and dad has a course on Sermon on the Mount.
And so we have the Christian ideas in the background.
And I was like, I don't think there's anything bad about that, even if that's what I'm working on.
So I guess that like maybe part partly answers one of the questions is I've decided to.
I've decided that the work part isn't evil.
Maybe it's a gift God's given me.
It's like, yeah, you enjoy it.
You want to build something.
There's nothing wrong with that just because it doesn't line up into a more traditional view of what I think a Christian woman is supposed to look like.
And I could be totally wrong about what a Christian woman is supposed to look like.
And then as for the mornings...
I mean, it's pretty simple.
I'm reading the Bible.
I tried getting one of those Bibles where you go through it day by day, but at least the version I had jumped around, so it had like a piece of the Old Testament and a piece of the New Testament, and then it would shift sections, and I was just—I couldn't keep track of where I was.
So I've started—like, I've read the Bible— And I've read different sections a number of times, but I've gone through the whole thing.
And so I'm usually just opening it up and reading a section, kind of randomly.
So I'm doing that, and then I'm praying on my knees.
And same at night.
Although I do, like I said, I'll have days where I kind of have to get up in a rush because of the baby or something like that, and I skip that.
And And then I'll try to get to it later and things.
But if I do end up missing days, I can feel it.
Soul-wise.
I can definitely feel it.
So I need to be more disciplined about that.
For sure.
What do you do when you're opening the Bible at random?
It's in one of them bits, like say in Numbers, where it's like just a lot of listing of people's names or chronicles, or if it's the back bit of Ezekiel, or some of the bits in Kings, where they're just really describing exactly how you've got to build a temple, and it's like 20 qubits, this, 10 qubits, 10,000.
Sometimes I'm like, I ain't doing that.
There's too much qubits.
I ain't building a temple.
This is no good to me.
Give me hard and fast advice on how to deal with my wife and work and godlessness and the devil infiltrating every area of public life.
Or I'm not going to concentrate.
I know you're saying about that when the Bible...
I've got a good version by Nicky Gumbel and Pippa Gumbel.
It's the Alpha Bible.
They started this movement, Alpha, in my country.
And it's good.
Anyway, they start at Genesis and Matthew, right?
So you get a bit, like, so every day, basically in chronological order, you're reading a bit of Genesis.
Like, you know, say if you were to start on January the 1st.
I didn't.
I got baptised on April 28th, and I think I started doing this on April the 29th, right?
So, like, I was, you know, a third of the way through or whatever, and I started there, because it's...
It's described day by day.
You read the bit that's on your day.
Anyway, right?
So at the beginning, though, it starts with Genesis and Matthew and either a psalm or a proverb, and then you go through it.
But then I notice they stuck Job in front of Exodus.
I'm like, what are you doing with it?
What's going on there?
I mean, I only noticed that when going back at it.
And I don't know the Bible well enough to know if they're moving books around.
But I don't...
Actually, I'm going to talk to Nicky Gumbel and go, what's going on with that, mate?
Because I want it...
In order, I'm trying to come to terms with all this stuff.
What do you do if, you know, what do you do with them passages where it's a very, like, I bet your dad would go, well, you know, you've got to be specific when it comes to building, is it?
Like, you'd say, like, you've got to read that.
You're not allowed to skip over the qubit stuff.
He wouldn't have it, would he?
He'd make you do the qubit stuff.
What do you do if you're in Ezekiel in the qubit stuff?
So I'm usually, usually in the mornings, I'm flipping through the New Testament.
So that kind of solves that problem.
For the Old Testament, when I first went through the Bible, like the first time, I actually listened to a lot of the Old Testament through an audiobook, and that helped with that.
And I did that entirely in order.
I go back to Psalms and things, and I'll flip through those, but I don't think I would start some of the more detailed chapters randomly.
So I've read them now, and I've listened to them in audiobooks, but for the random parts, I've found that the New Testament...
Anyway, speaks to me more.
And maybe because it's...
I don't know.
Maybe because that's where Jesus is really apparent.
Or maybe because it takes almost less focus than some of the chapters that have more details.
I don't know.
But I'm usually flipping through the New Testament and reading the Old Testament more slowly in order.
Yeah, right, because say like in Ezekiel, Michaela, the beginning bit starts with a UFO bit.
So I already knew that from my UFO days of checking out.
He's like, the clouds open, there's beings up there, there's wheels within wheels, the temple's illuminated with smoke.
I'm like, yep, that's UFOs.
You know, this is me when I'm tripping when I'm 16. You know, when I'm doing acid and stuff.
Then he goes into this amazing bit where it's like he describes it as if he's married to Israel and Israel's been prostituted themselves and he does this sort of like actually at some points rather disgusting description of how this prostitute has behaved but it really resonated With me,
because, like, in particular, because I lived, like, so hedonistically for so long, even when cleaned from drugs and alcohol, which I've been, by the grace of God, for nearly 22 years, I still carried on with the, you know, promiscuity for a pretty long time.
And then, like, when it got into this bit, where he started saying this, right, um, I'm filled with fury, this is Ezekiel 16, 30, I'm filled with fury against you, declares the Sovereign Lord, when you do all these things, acting like a brazen prostitute, When you built your mounds at every street corner and made your lofty shrines in every public square, you were unlike a prostitute because you scorned payment.
Well, that's a heavy diss.
You adulterous wife, you prefer strangers to your own husband.
All prostitutes receive gifts, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from everywhere for your illicit favours.
Anyway, it gets right into that, and at some point, so stuff you can't...
I believe you're finding in the Bible, particularly when Simon and Garfunkel said, I've been slandered, libeled.
I hear words I never heard in the Bible.
They should check out Ezekiel because it gets dark in there.
But then after all that stuff, good UFO gear, good moral stuff about promiscuity, he has more visions.
I think they're cast out of Israel now.
They're wandering around after Nebuchadnezzar and all that.
And, like, it's so tough, I think, when it gets to this bit.
Like, of how you've got to build a temple.
I'm not having this, day after day, of, like, build it to this many cubits.
Let me find it.
It's where I am at the moment.
Right, it starts off good enough, like, you know, like, God's appearing to him and everything.
I'm not criticising the Bible and literally blaspheming, by the way.
I'm just saying that as someone coming to the Bible pretty new...
When you get like this, it's got to be like this, like look at this.
Whoever enters the north gate to worship is to go out the south gate and whoever enters by the south gate is to go out the north gate.
No one's to return through the gate by which they entered, but each is to go out the opposite gate.
The prince is to be among them.
Going in when they go and going out when they go.
At the feasts and the appointed festivals, the grain offering is to be an effer with a bull, an effer with a ram, and with the lamb as much as he pleases, along with a hint of oil for each effer, right?
And I'm sure, like, you know, I bet your dad could drag a 20-minute YouTube video out of that.
But, like, for me, like, that's the kind of very prescriptive stuff that I'm like, ugh.
You know, and then, you know, so it's a bright voyage, isn't it, leaping into scripture.
Yeah, I think, and I don't remember, like, I don't want to, I think my husband might have told me this, but I can't remember, so I'm not going to give him full credit, but he might get partial credit.
But I feel like, partial, yeah, I feel like part of what I got from those really descriptive parts of the Old Testament was how easy it is to have a relationship with Jesus.
Now, it's still hard, and I know that coming from someone who wanted the relationship and was yearning for something and couldn't or wouldn't find it for a while until recently.
But I think some of those examples in the Old Testament are like, look how complicated it was and how many rules you had to follow to do what God wanted you to do.
It was complicated.
There were a lot of laws.
And then you have the New Testament, and it's like, have a relationship with Jesus.
You know, recognize you're a sinner.
You know, repent, forgive.
It's so much easier than following all these.
So, like, when I read those parts, I usually think, like, look how hard it was before Jesus came back.
That's usually what I'm getting from those.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good way of, like, handling that.
But in the New Covenant...
Firstly, he dies for us.
We have to acknowledge that we're all, like you said earlier, we're all sinners, we're all broken, we all need forgiving.
Second, like, you know, we're going to know eternal life because of his sacrifice.
And third, there is a new intimacy because now God knows what it is to be a person and to have a body and to live down here and deal with all this stuff.
Whereas before, It's like dealing with God angrily prescribing, I've told you enough times, stop sinning and building all those orders and stop worshipping false idols, you bloody idiots, and like, you know, then eventually going, here's very specific instructions on a temple, because I know that if I let you have any free reign at all, you're going to go mad with it.
Yeah, that's good, man.
That helped me.
Thanks.
Oh, no problem.
Cheers, Michaela.
Well, oh, finally then, your dad said, like, about maybe doing a course on the Pearson Academy.
He really wants to do that.
He was talking about Eliad.
Do you know who that means, Eliad?
Yeah.
Yeah, he's like someone who wrote the profane and the sacred, who's some sort of Jung-like, I don't know, theologian or whatever.
I don't know if I'm mangling that up.
Anyway, I've ordered them books, and I'm going to read them, and I'll do that.
I'll do that course.
Oh my gosh, that would be amazing.
He's brought that up three or four times.
I told him I was going on your podcast and he was like, remind him about the course.
He wants to do the course.
That would be incredible.
I think you guys, I mean, would do a really good job together.
It'd be very interesting for people.
Did you see when we done a sort of weird rap battle in Washington?
I did.
It was good.
It was pretty weird.
Yeah, it's weird.
It's pretty weird.
I can't wait till my daughters are old enough to offer that kind of commentary on my work.
Pretty weird, that kind of commentary.
Yeah, until they can go.
What's this you're doing?
Alright, Michaela, thanks a lot, mate.
It's really good to talk to you.
Please give my love to your husband and to your mother and to your father.
And I hope that next time we're chatting, it's about doing some stuff on the Peterson Academy.
Thanks for your helping me in particular with that Old Testament stuff just then.
And thanks for our conversation today.
Oh, thank you very much for having me on.
That was fun.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation, and I hope if you're enjoying conversations of this nature, you'll consider becoming a member of our Awaken Wonder community and watching us over on Locals, where we make break bread.
It's Jonathan Pajot this week.
Have a look.
It's a brilliant conversation.
In fact, this bit was magnificent, and I think you'll love it.
What does a car do?
A car makes you go fast.
Oh, okay.
Downstream from a car is the re-planning of every single city in the world.
The transformation of communities, the transformation of the specialization of large spaces in the world.
So now you don't have villages with communities.
You have shopping centers and suburbs.
And that's what the car did.
But did anybody realize that that's what the car had in it?
Thanks for joining us today.
We will be back tomorrow for a brilliant conversation with Dr. Robert Redfield, formerly of the CDC, who created shockwaves when he came out in public support of Bobby Kennedy.
What are his thoughts on the revolution in American health?
What kind of culpability does he believe he personally has for the corruption, not only of the pandemic period, but of the preceding opioid epidemic?
Pandemic?
Epidemic?
Call it what you will.
We'll talk about that tomorrow.
Until then, if you can, stay free.
▲
Export Selection