Ep. 2093 - Very Bad Ideas: Dune 3 Popcorn Bucket & Fully AI Movie

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Just four days before election day. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. We've got a little bit of good news here. A little bit of good news is that, speaking of radical leftists on campus, ICE is apparently conducting the most ambitious left-wing surveillance program ever in history. This is being reported by WIRED. So right after Charlie's assassination, there were a lot of us calling for a massive crackdown on radical leftism. Looks like we actually are getting it. We'll get to that in a moment. First, though, a little bit more good news. The first ever fully AI feature film has completely flopped. This was not in the United States. This is in China. Of course. It was China that airs the first ever fully AI feature film. The movie is called Sun Xingdui Future Past. I think Sun Xingdui means no ticky, no washy. That's the only Chinese phrase I actually know. The subtitle is Future Past. It was released last week. Here's a little taste of the movie. If you're only listening to this right now, the graphics look pretty impressive. The graphics make it look like it's a $200 million movie or something. I'm not quite sure what they're saying. Okay, releasing October 2026. It grossed like no money. Almost zero dollars. At the box office, it grossed $198,000. Compare this to a Chinese film released earlier this year, a movie called Nu Lai, which had a budget of $200. Not $200,000, not $200 million. It had a budget of $200. It looks like your kid made this movie on Minecraft. Here's a very, very brief trailer from that movie. Like a screensaver on Microsoft 95. That one sounds more like the Jabba the Hutt language. It makes me think that's a Somali release. It's not. Both Chinese releases. The first ever super-duper amazing graphics AI release grosses $198,000. And Nu Lai, which was made on a Commodore 64 plugged into a TV screen, made $4 million at the box office. This is great news. You know why this is great news? Because I don't want my life to be run by robots and computers because I do not want to worship dumb, dumb idols lest I become like them. Why is it? On every objective measure, the AI movie looks way better than the Nu Lai $200 self-animated movie. Why, why did the AI movie flop? It flopped for two reasons. And it's something that people don't get about AI, or SI as we're now supposed to call it, super intelligence, artificial intelligence. What they don't get is that AI is particularly bad at art. I'm not saying that the graphics can't be impressive. I'm not saying that the music can't be impressive. But it is bad at doing what art does. Because for art to be interesting, rather than merely derivative or slop, for art to be interesting, you have to come up with new metaphors. You have to come up with new images. You need to allow people to see things differently. This is what, this is this line I go back to frequently from Joseph Conrad in the introduction to Nigger of Narcissus. He says that the scientist deals, in fact, and the thinker deals in ideas. But the purpose of art, what the artist is doing, is to let you see something. Maybe see something that you hadn't seen before. And AI can't do that because in order to see things anew, you have to have sensual experience. In order to create a new metaphor, you need to be able to touch things and see things. And you need to process those sense perceptions through the power of the intellect, none of which AI has. So it just can't do that. So the art is always going to be, It can be dazzling slop. It can be sensational slop. It can be real grade A, USDA, prime certified slop. But it's never going to be art, just intrinsically. That's the one reason. The second reason why people don't want fully AI movies is because we don't trust the robots. When I go see a Coen Brothers movie, it matters to me that the Coen Brothers made it because I trust the Coen Brothers. Because I recognize that the Coen Brothers are good artists, so I'm not wasting my time and money. Two, I recognize that the Coen Brothers are good artists, understand the world. So the images in the music that are going through my body, penetrating into my soul, that are shaping the way that I see the world and even behave in the world, I trust that the Coen Brothers aren't filling my head with poison. Not to sound like a church lady, kind of social conservative scold, but I guess I will do that. Really, what I want to do is sound like Plato, who made the same objection in the Republic. We need to be careful about art. I know we live in this modern, freewheeling age where we say, you know, you need to read, you need to read banned books and you need to, we can't censor anything. But no, actually, banning some books is probably a good idea, like the Anarchist Cookbook, speaking of left-wing terror, which we'll get to in a minute. I think we should probably ban that book. Porn, we should probably ban those books and movies and images. There are plenty of things that we should ban. Let's not forget, you know, now the worst possible image you can think of of an authoritarian, totalitarian society is burning books. Let's not forget Plato supported burning books. The Apostles burned books in the Acts of the Apostles. The great doctors of the church supported burning books. Martin Luther, the leader of Protestantism, he burned some books. There is an argument to burning some books. You don't want to burn, like, Anna Karenina, but you probably do want to burn, like, the terrorist handbook and pornography. And why is that? Because art is very, very powerful. And so the reason that people don't want to go see the AI slop is, we have no idea who's burning books. Who's making this? If you're just using AI to punch up a script, but the project is still being led by human beings, that's one thing. But if I'm just going and waiting to see what the robot wants to feed into my head, that's kind of scary. Best case, I'm worshipping a dumb idol, and I will become like that dumb idol. Worst case, it's demons. So, anyway, this is great news. I really like it. Plus, there's a great movie made by human beings that's coming out very soon, November 11th, and that is Ben Shapiro's movie, Confession. There is so cool, man. This movie, it's next level. It's got a star-studded cast. It's a great story. It's a great subject. So, anyway, get ready for that. It's going to be in theaters one night only, November 11th. Make sure you get your tickets, set the date, get a babysitter. It's going to be a great time. Now, one thing that you should not get when you go to the movie theater is the Dune III sandworm popcorn bucket. You may have seen this going around social media. You're probably sorry that you saw this going around social media. In preparation for the release of Dune III, I didn't even see Dune II, they've got this new merchandise at the movie theaters by the special popcorn bucket, and the popcorn bucket has one or two sandworms coming out of it. And I actually didn't see even the first Dune movie. I didn't read the Dune books. I was not familiar with what the sandworm looked like, and if I just looked at this popcorn bucket and I had no other context, I would not think that it was a sandworm. Because it looks like, this is a family show, we don't want to get too weird on here, we don't want to go blue. It looks like an anatomical feature that does not increase your appetite. I don't want to be reaching through whatever this kind of perforated hole is to get the popcorn. I think the Dune III popcorn bucket might very possibly permanently destroy the popcorn industry. Having looked at it even one time on the internet, I never want to eat popcorn again. And people are laughing at it because it's just kind of gross and ridiculous. But the point, the political import that comes out of something gross and weird like this is, put aside AI for a second. How many human beings had to look at the pitch, at the design for the Dune III popcorn bucket and approve it? Say, yeah, that looks good. Come on, this is a big movie, big studio. How many people, I have to believe that the people who approved this knew how gross it was and were just kind of playing a big trick on everybody. In any case though, we don't want to make the error of worshipping the dumb idol of AI and pretending that AI is some kind of omnipotent, omniscient god. We don't want to make the opposite error though of thinking that human beings are really smart at all. If you thought that we were. If you thought human beings had a big stock of reason. If you thought human beings were like really strategic and disciplined and intelligent. The sandworm popcorn bucket should cure you of that misconception. And it should cure you, therefore, of a modern political ideology. All of which are grounded upon the idea that human beings have limitless potential. This idea, you know, we only use 10% of our brains. That was very popular among leftists in the 1960s. Totally false, by the way, based on absolutely nothing. Human beings use 100% of our brains basically all of the time. But these ideologies that say that if we just fix a few structural things, we can cure all the problems in the world, end all disease, end poverty, live forever, have paradise on earth. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. If there's any good to come out of that very disgusting, scatological popcorn bucket, it should be to make you a conservative. Okay. Now let's get to some of the darker news. We have. On the topic of leftist ideology. A young woman going viral at one of the TPUSA Pick Up the Mic events for celebrating Charlie Kirk's assassination. We've seen a lot of that over the last year. And threatening one of the many speakers who have picked up the mic to carry on Charlie's legacy. Threatening him with murder to his face. First, though, I want to tell you about Ave Maria Mutual Funds. There's a lot more to say. First, though, go to AveMariaFunds.com. AveMariaFunds.com. AveMariaFunds.com. Election Day is almost here, and Americans are spending an extraordinary amount of time thinking about where their votes are going. Which candidates represent our values? Which policies should we support? What kind of country do we want to leave for our children? Okay. Well, that's great to think about when we're heading into the ballot box. But we vote every day. We vote with our wallets. We vote with our investments. And that's that last one that we don't think about all that much. 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Folks, in the latest episode of Mike Land, I sit down with exorcist Father Carlos Martins and Ryan Bethea, who are hosts of the hit podcast, The Exorcist Files, from furniture flying across the room to what Hollywood gets, completely wrong about exorcisms. We discuss it all. We also discuss the very popular increasing interest among the public with the occult, with the demonic, with exorcism. Here's a short clip. We'll have exorcism cases where all of a sudden, in the midst of the praying, there's some heaving going on, heaving. And people will vomit the strangest things. Pins, nails, screws. Bricks. Like a whole brick appears to emerge out of somebody's mouth. Which it couldn't even possibly fit down their mouth. It's a real brick. It's a real brick. Did this happen to an exorcist you know, or is this. To me, there's some breakthrough in the prayer. All of a sudden, there's just a worm writhing underneath your chest. There's no way there was a worm there before. How do you make sense of this then? I think most people's conception of exorcism is wrong. And if we correct it, then a lot of other questions are answered. And a lot of other questions are answered as well. That episode is coming out tonight, just in time for Halloween. Watch a full episode on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel for the uncensored, ad-free version. You need to subscribe to The Daily Wire. Really, really dark stuff. Definitely bumping up on or firmly within the realm of the demonic. Young woman goes viral at a TPUSA Pick Up the Mic event for celebrating Charlie's murder and threatening more speakers. If you can announce your name and speak. Speak loudly. Thank you so much. I go by Pamper Baby. Yeah, okay, so I took a Plan B and I'm an immigrant this morning. Like, feeling kind of guilty, so I wanted to read a poem that I actually wrote. It was like, I don't know, felt a little. Do you have a question, though? No, I just wanted to share. I felt like, you know, freedom of speech. I wanted to share a poem I wrote for everybody. "'Twas the night before the Kirkiversary, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The flags were hung proudly. The memes all on deck, as we solemnly remembered, a shot to the neck. The podcast fell silent. The hot takes grew wary. For tomorrow, dear friends, is the great Kirkiversary." So I'll see everyone at the Squirt for Kirk. We're hosting that also on October 10th. I'll see y'all there. It's a BYOE. You know, vaccines included. Free. See y'all there. That's all. Are you happy with yourself now? I mean, I think that was just. Baby, I'm thrilled. Yeah, well, I mean. You're brave for being out here. You know, no protection, no nothing. No, like, neck brace or. I'll pray for you. Isn't that crazy? Some leftists might shoot you in the neck. Yeah, isn't that crazy? And wouldn't that be a great thing? That's what she's saying. So she opens up. She says, hey. She might be joking, kind of a macabre joke. Maybe she really means it. But she comes up. The very first thing she says is, hey, I murdered my child this morning. I murdered my child. I'm an immigrant. I'm glad that my fellow travelers murdered your friend. And I want to murder you. Freedom of speech. So, just at a practical level, if this young woman is an immigrant, she should be deported. Especially if she hasn't received citizenship yet. If she has, hopefully she could be denaturalized in some way. But she should be deported. She should be prosecuted if it's possible to prosecute her. I don't know that that really rises to the level of a criminal threat. But it would be good. It would be a positive outcome if we could prosecute her and throw her in prison for the things she said. Which brings me to my broader point. And it's where a lot of conservatives and I parted ways. Not on the team. Not in terms of what we're trying to achieve. Not in terms of working together for a good political change. But this is where we parted ways ideologically after Charlie was murdered. Is everyone said, double down on the free marketplace of ideas. We need to engage these people. We need to just keep talking. And I said, I don't think that's going to work. I think that's a bad idea. We should engage with the people who are persuadable. We should engage with the people who are confused. We should try to rectify the bad ideas of leftists on campus. But for some people, a growing number, a substantial number of people on the left, there ain't no talking. Talking's not going to help anything. We need to punish them. We need to silence them. We need to censor them. We need to exclude them. We need to arrest them if we can. We need to deport them if possible. We need to bring to bear the brute force of the state to punish them, body and soul. And the reason for that is, as Chesterton observes, there's a thought that stops thought, and that's the thought that ought to be stopped. But if the political debate between the left and the right has now degraded from, I think we should raise taxes. I think we should lower taxes. I think that abortion is morally permissible because I don't believe that, life really begins at conception. Oh, I think life does begin at conception. You know, even down to a serious moral debate where the left is totally wrong and the conservatives are totally right, at the very least, you can engage in that kind of a debate in a constructive way where you both have goodwill, you are both aiming toward a good goal for the country. You can do that. If it's degraded from that point to, I want to murder you. I don't think you should murder me. Well, I want to murder you and all of your friends. But murdering me, would be bad. Well, I disagree that it would be bad. I think it would be good. look out, I'm going to murder you. If that's now the political debate, there is no purpose to debate and there is no debate to be had at all. The free marketplace of ideas does not function when that is the commodity that is being bought and sold, when that is the means of exchange. In that point, you just need to kick people out of the marketplace. And some conservatives get that, I think. A lot of conservatives do not. Because we've taken a good thing, which is speech and debate, and I do this all the time. I go to college campuses all the time and I'm constantly debating students and I'm debating adults at other places. I love debate. I don't have a real job. The main thing I do is talk and write. So if debate is in itself not useful, I need to figure out another line of work. I've got to figure something out. I'm not saying that debate is not useful and helpful. But what we've done is take a good thing, and blow it out way beyond its reasonable limits. We've made an idol out of it. We've taken it out of its proper context. And now that can be quite negative. There is nothing to be gained from debating a person like this. The only thing that we can gain is publicly punishing a person like this to scare all the people who would agree with her and who would try to follow through on the left's threats and, in fact, the left's actions where they kill us. That's it. That's the takeaway. If you are watching that clip and your conclusion is, I can fix her. There are going to be people out there. She's not a bad-looking young woman. There are going to be people who are not going to see the glowing red demonic eyes right behind the retina. And they're going to say, oh, you know, I can fix her. I just need to talk to her. I just need to give her a few more facts and logic. And then I think if that's your takeaway, you're not going to make it. You've got to punish these people. And the federal government is doing that. This is one of the best stories I've seen in a year. Coming out of the federal government, coming out of the Trump administration, ICE is apparently bringing a brutal crackdown to left-wing violence. We'll get to that in a second. First, I want to tell you about Catholic Match. First, though, go to catholicmatch.com. The holidays bring many cherished traditions. Midnight Mass, perhaps, big family meals, at least one relative conducting a public inquiry into why you are still single. Well, you need to have an answer. You need to have an answer. You need to have an answer for them. And now the Christmas Mass may be more crowded than usual, but hoping your future spouse happens to sit three pews ahead of you, that's not much of a dating strategy. Catholic Match helps you expand the search. Beyond your parish and immediate friend group, it is the largest Catholic dating platform in the world built for Catholics who are serious about their faith and serious about marriage. 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ICE is running one of the largest anti-left surveillance operations in U.S. history. ICE's Homeland Security Investigations is engaged in far-reaching spying against left-wing activists that rivals the FBI and CIA crackdowns on the civil rights and anti-war movements. Love that. A lot of people, including conservatives, have been taught a bunch of nonsense about the FBI and the CIA from the middle of the 20th century. They hear that the FBI cracked down on the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement had some good inclinations, some decent ideas, some fine people who were involved. But it was also like a conundrum. And that's just a fact of history. Just because you call something, you know, the candy and puppies movement doesn't mean that it's all fun and games. There's a lot of bad stuff there. The Soviet Union was funding a lot of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was in many ways a front for radical politics, violent leftism. And it was very good that the FBI kept a tab on what was going on and in some cases sought to undermine it. Same thing here. You remember when the Antifa violence really started kicking up about 10 years ago, you had major news figures. I think Jake Tapper was one of them. You had major people on the mainstream left who were saying, well, Antifa's great. Either there is no such thing as Antifa, or Antifa's great, or, you know, the original Antifa was the greatest generation that went out and beat the Nazis or whatever. You know, they're anti-fascist too. And that's not, Antifa is a left-wing terror organization. It seems to be the paramilitary arm, increasingly. of the mainstream Democrat party. And you cannot have a civil society with these people. So this is really great stuff. Just a little bit from the top of the report. Attorneys for 15 Minnesota residents facing federal conspiracy charges have obtained evidence of a sweeping, possibly unconstitutional, spying operation carried out by ICE against left-wing social movements in Minnesota and beyond. Love this. And the Trump administration deserves a lot of props for this. I've pointed out, with four days before the midterm elections, that I understand some of the reasons people aren't feeling motivated this year. Gas prices are high. Things are expensive. Not all of that is Trump's fault. Not all of that is due to the Iran war. Reasonable minds can disagree on the Iran war. Yada, yada, yada. But I said, people's memory, it's very slim. We don't have that great limitless store of reason. And so we forget all of the good stuff that has happened. Fully closing the southern border, which Joe Biden and Kamala Harris told us could not be done. Trump did it in about 30 seconds. Deporting. Millions of illegal aliens and other foreigners, actually, who just chose to leave over the last year and a half. Very, very good stuff. Stopping the political persecution of Christians and conservatives. Letting the pro-life grannies out of prison. Really good. Ending DEI. Ending a lot of the wokeness. Really, really good. Those are just the things we know about. There are some actions of the federal government that they actually can't publicize that much. And in fact, you only read about it from the enemies of this administration and the allies of the left-wing like this. Some things need to be conducted in secrecy. Another one of the reasons I am not in favor of a fully transparent government. You can't have a fully transparent government. You can't have a fully transparent business. Some things you got to play a little close to the vest. Here, this is really, really great news. We just got to keep it up. Keep it up. And it's going to be hard to keep it up if the Democrats win the midterm election. So we really, really, really need to go out there, vote, get your friends to vote, vote early, vote often, keep on voting. Okay. Speaking of that election, a little bit of worrisome news. Deep, deep red. South Carolina is tied right now. Lindsey Graham died earlier this year. His sister was appointed to fill out the rest of his term. Then his sister decided that she was going to run for a full Senate term. And President Trump endorsed her. She shot up in the polls in the primary. She beat the other more established conservative candidate. And now we're going to now we might lose South Carolina. Here are the latest numbers. By the way, if you want all of the election news, you got to follow Daily Wire's election hub. Go there right now. Check it every 15 minutes. Get your blood pressure up. It'll work better than any of those nicotine pouches because this is going to be a nail biter coming down to Tuesday. Right now, the polls coming out of South Carolina, the average of five polls, has Lindsey Graham's sister Darlene up by a little under two and a half points. In South Carolina. Lindsey Graham won his last election by 10 points or more. 12 points, something like that. Two and a half points here. Not good news. The latest poll that we have, East Carolina University poll from October 29th, has Graham up by four points. That's good. A Siena College poll from the day before has the race literally tied, 48 to 48. Other polls, also about four points splitting the candidates. But the margin of error is four points, too. So statistically speaking, the race is totally tied. Now, there is a little bit of good news here. And it's being reported as bad news, but it's being reported as bad news for the right by the left. So you have to know how to interpret not just the polls, but how to interpret the news reports here. One, polls generally disfavor the Republicans. So you can usually add two to four points for the Republican. So again, I think we're going to win South Carolina. I think we're going to win Michigan. I hope. I think. I think we will. I still, in my deep gut, think we're going to win Texas. Based on how polling works, based on the fact that conservatives don't respond to polls, based on all this stuff. But there's another tangible good sign here, which is President Trump just canceled his rallies over the weekend. So the left is reporting this. Oh, Trump, he's giving up. He's too depressed. He's not. He can't get attendance at his rallies. There is no enthusiasm for the Republicans in this election cycle. So he canceled his rallies. That's totally the opposite of what's going on here. Trump's been hosting these rallies. nonstop for four weeks now. The guy has more energy than anyone I've ever seen. It's just unreal. And the guy's 80 years old. And he is just going out every single day, flying to some new part of the country, going off the cuff for like three hours, making jokes, capturing people's attention. No one can stop talking about his comments on the male physical form. And then flying back, doing his president business, his day job. Then he flies back out every day for four weeks. He's canceling right before the midterms, right before election day, these rallies. Why? Trump told reporters, he does not, quote, feel like I have to go to Kansas. I don't think I have to go to Kansas here. Senator Roger Marshall is in, according to the polls, a fairly competitive race with the Democrat Adam Hamilton. But what this tells me is the internal polls, the tracking polls that the campaigns are getting every single day at this point, are breaking in favor. of the Republicans. So Trump says, you know what? I don't need to go to Kansas. Kansas is safe. There are some other races too. In Iowa, it was looking like Iowa was a little bit dicey for a while. The fact that Trump's canceling the rally in Iowa. It's not like he's having trouble attracting crowds. The rallies are all packed. And Trump likes doing them and he's very good at them. The fact that he's canceling the rally says, okay, Kansas, we're good. Iowa, we're good. Obviously it's Michigan, it's Texas, it's Maine that we have to look at. Now, apparently South Carolina. I think, I'll break with basically all of the conservative pundits on this. I think the data we're getting from the polls and the behavior of the politicians is that in the final days of the campaign, the numbers are breaking at least slightly for the Republicans. The Democrats do seem to be getting a little bit more desperate. All of these races though are razor thin. Here's one of those desperate candidates. That would be Abdul El-Sayed, who again, should be doing better in this race actually than he is. This is a Democrat seat. You have a Democrat, leaving the Senate. So you're replacing a Democrat. This is Michigan, which is purple, but kind of breaks Democrat. It's purple leaning Democrat. So Abdul El-Sayed should be up a fair bit in this race. He's not. It's dead even. So Abdul El-Sayed is pulling out these last minute gasps to pander to whoever he can. He's not doing nearly well enough with black voters. Democrats need to have a lock on the black vote or their entire campaign strategy falls apart. So here's the best that Abdul can muster to win over. The African-Americans. Because for too many black Detroiters in particular, their experience with somebody who looks like me is not a good one. You go into a gas station, you go to a party store, you're being talked at from behind bulletproof glass. If you're a woman, you're being catcalled. If you're a kid, you're being sold a Lucy out the back, being denied a bathroom. I've always tried to be on the right side of that. But I also understand that if that's your experience with somebody whose name is like that leaves a terrible taste. So his pitch to black voters is, hey, blacks, I know that you spend all your time in the liquor stores and the gas station selling Lucy's behind the gas station, you know, behind that bulletproof glass. And look, I know the guys who look like me. I know the Abdul's of the world. I know that we're deeply racist sex pests, but I'm different. No, don't worry. I see you differently. I know. Listen, I know you go into that gas station, you black voters, you're buying your Colt 45. I know you buying that old English malt liquor. You're coming up there. And I know the gas station attendant, he thinks you're going to steal it or shoot him. So he has the bulletproof glass. But just trust me, black voters, I would never stereotype like that. No, you can trust me. I know women. I know you're afraid of the of the roving gangs of Muslim rapists in this country and in Europe. But don't worry. I would never do that. In Abdul's case, I think he's probably right. I have a feeling women are not exactly Abdul's type. So in that part, I actually believe him. But this is not strong communication. If the best argument you can make to try to raise your standing with a crucial demographic, which is black voters for the Democrat Party, if the best argument is, hey, I'm not as racist as all the other people that look like me, I don't think that's going to be really persuasive. So speaking of the future of America, really great vision of the future, very forward looking and backward looking vision coming from the State Department, thanks to Marco Rubio, who has articulated what America is about in a way that is driving our opponents nuts. First, though, I want to tell you about GOP votes. First, though, the Democratic Socialists of America won primaries across the country. Next, they're coming for Congress and they're coming for you. If they win the midterms, they will defund the police, reopen the border and force men into women's sports. Last line of defense and GOPvotes.org is your partner in the fight. Go to GOPvotes.org right now. Make a plan to vote early. If you live in the critical Senate battleground states of Alaska, Michigan, Maine, Ohio, Iowa or Texas, early voting is already underway this week. Democrats are energized. The stakes have never been higher. We cannot afford to have people like AOC and her communist cronies running the show. That is why I need you to make a plan to vote early right now. Go to GOPvotes.org to find your polling location. Vote early. Stop the socialist takeover of America. Paid for by SLF PAC. Vote early. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. BJ's, home of the save. My favorite comment yesterday is from Hard Boiled Entertainment. It says, what's very telling, Michael, is that nobody seemed to consider that the kid in the morgue being alive was a miracle. It's a great point. Because we don't really believe in miracles these days. I was talking to Thomas Madden, probably the preeminent, the leading historian of the Crusades in America. I was talking to Thomas Madden just yesterday. And Madden, we were talking about relics, you know, bones of the saints. And I said, hey, how should we think about relics? You know, like, if there really are, is the bone of St. Peter? How do we know that? What's the evidence? How did the medievals think about that? He said, it's funny, because in the modern era, we just think we need carbon dating and DNA analysis and documented provenance going back to the first century. And that's how we prove that a relic is real. But in the Middle Ages, they didn't think like that. The way they would prove a relic is real is if it led to miracles. And I thought, what a beautiful way to think about the distinction between the Middle Ages and the modern era. And the funny thing is, the miracle test for relics is actually probably much more reliable than modern carbon dating, which is rife with error. Anyway, just a way to think about it as we try to return to a more sensible conception of the world. Because we, as I point out on the show, I made the point yesterday, we know much less about the world. We have a much more tenuous grasp on reality than the average medieval peasant did. So before we get to the mailbag, I'm excited to get the mailbag. But apropos of this point, I have to get to this beautiful video that came out of the State Department for a day celebrating religious liberty. - The United States has been a part of the history of the world as a witness unto all nations, unto the ends of the earth. From that command came America. Our nation more than any other in history was shaped by this Christian idea. This is who we are. And from the beginning, we have carried the belief that our country represents something new in the world. But the soul of our nation has always been rooted in an ancient faith. - Spot on. Preach, Marco. I love this ad so much. I love everything about this. Just think about it. It's a video for religious freedom day, religious liberty day. And when we think about religious liberty, we think about neutrality among all religions. All religions are basically the same and all religions have the same rights. That's contrary to the Christian idea. The Christian idea, traditionally, is that error has no rights. Error non abet ius. - But we have this idea of religious freedom as just neutrality. All religions are basically the same. And it's all kind of a bunch of bunk anyway. And we can't really scrutinize any of them according to reason. So it's all the same. Rubio comes out. He says, hey, for religious freedom day, I just want to remind you, America is a Christian country. We are intrinsically Christian. And it is only because of our Christianity that we are tolerant of other religions. But of course, this has to be done in accordance with the tradition and within limits and within rules. And of course, this has to be done in accordance with the tradition and within rules. Because Aristotle's third law remains undefeated. You can't have two contradictory things be simultaneously true. So he says, we're a Christian country. This country was discovered and founded because of Christianity. And this is a crucial part of the history. Christopher Columbus discovered the new world in order to fund another crusade. That's what he was doing. He was praying the divine office on the ships. Christopher Columbus named the first place that he landed in the Western Hemisphere San Salvador. door, the Holy Savior. Christopher Columbus was really, really, really Christian. The way Christopher Columbus got out of a tight little skirmish one time, he was dealing with the Taino Indians and they stopped bringing him food. And even after they had been trading some of their goods, Christopher Columbus, he could have just died at this point. His whole crew could have starved. And he was able to get the Tainos back in line because he predicted a lunar eclipse. And he told them that the Christian God was very angry with them. And he really kind of meant it. He said, like, God is really faithful to those who believe in him, who are devoted to him. In any case, that's Columbus. Then you have the Mayflower. The Mayflower also is this mission to found a new kind of Jerusalem. And then the later Puritans who came wanted a shining city on the hill. And that's just what America is. And Rubio has no problem saying this full-throatedly. The whole Trump administration, same thing. Vice President, J.D. Bantz, same thing. It's just beautiful stuff. It's beautiful because it's traditional. It's beautiful because it's true. Okay. So much more I want to get to. But now it's time for my favorite time of the week, the mailbag. Our mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles. Take it away. Hi, Michael. It seems to me that one problem we have on the right is that we're too arrogant with our views. Too often, we're more interested in knocking down the left and calling them ignorant and trying to understand their perspectives and meet them where they are. Many on the left have legitimate reasons for holding the position of the president. I can't hear. Can the producers please increase the volume in my ear? I actually can't hear this great question, but I know it's beautiful. I know it's a beautiful question. I don't think you'll ultimately get anywhere with that approach. Curious about your thoughts on this. Love your show and all that you do. Okay. Okay. So this is about how to engage with the left. Well, deporting some of them is a good idea, if I heard that question correctly. There's a time to every purpose under heaven, is really my answer. So sometimes you got to own the libs with facts and logic. Sometimes you need to find common ground with them. And this is not a one size fits all approach. Like when you're debating a lib on TV or on a stream or something, most of the time you just have to pummel the leftist with his ideas into the ground for the edification of the audience. Some of the time it can be helpful to find common ground. I do that a lot, actually, in my approach. But sometimes you just got to beat the guy into the ground. When you're talking to your cousin across the Thanksgiving table, you don't want to beat your cousin into the ground. You want to find commonality. Because so much of leftism really is just a perversion of the right idea. Because liberalism itself is a perversion of Christianity. It emerges out of Christianity and it seeks to displace Christianity. So there are concepts within it that we all share. Freedom. Liberalism has the wrong understanding of freedom. The common good. Liberalism just has the wrong understanding of what the common good is. Equality and care and charity. Liberalism just has the wrong idea of all of those things. So yeah, you need all of them. You need all of it. But sometimes you also need a little bit of arrogance. Because that persuades people. Confidence is very attractive. Okay, next question. Hi, Michael. This is Jordan from the Republic of Texas. I was recently watching your interview with Chris Hansen. And one thing I noticed is that when you were talking about child porn, you used the term, or both of y'all used the term, CSAM, or child sexual abuse material. And I was wondering if this was a case of the euphemism treadmill, in which we used to see porn as something disgraceful and something to be ashamed about. But as it's become normalized, people want to separate off child porn as something that is uniquely evil and to normalize adults engaging in this activity. And as a way to make themselves not feel quite as guilty about engaging with one form of shameful act and to not, and to, and recognizing the other as a unique shameful act that is only because children can't give consent. Good question. I've gone back and forth on the use of this term. This is the new euphemism for this material, whatever we're going to call it, is CSAM, child sexual abuse material, which we used to call child porn or kiddie porn or whatever. So I initially resisted the new euphemism in part for the reasons that you're describing. However, I think it's more complicated than that. So initially you have pornography, all of which is gross and bad and banned in most cases and society looks down on it. Pornography. And then there's this particularly heinous subset of pornography. So that's how we referred to it. As pornography has been normalized, especially after the 90s and the year 2000, there were attempts, bipartisan attempts under Bill Clinton to try to reduce pornography on the internet. Republicans, Democrats came together. Society still agreed porn was bad, but the judges overthrew it. So now we've had 25 years of the internet. Most people don't think that porn is that bad. Now, in this case, it probably does make sense to have a new if the old view was pornography is really bad. And so child pornography is particularly heinous subset of that. If everyone thinks that pornography is fine, then child pornography seems less heinous. You understand? Maybe people would still say, well, it's still much worse than regular pornography. But if the main thing that we call it, the category in which we lump it, if that category is now seen to be neutral or even positive in some cases, you have health agencies promoting pornography and all sorts of grave sinful behaviors as somehow healthy, sex positive. Well, if that's the case, then you do need to drive home the point that this kind of material is abusive in itself. Because there have been attempts in the last five or six years to normalize pedophilia. There have been lots of attempts to do that by the left, academic attempts, popular attempts. So I'm not opposed to it. But yeah, this is an example of language evolving. And this is an example of language evolving. Next question. We will have to do a particularly strong mailbag next Friday because of the ways in which I'm not casting blame. I'm not pointing fingers. But it's Jacob's fault. It's Fake Headline Friday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code NOLSKIND to check out for two months free on all annual plans. ♪♪♪♪♪ ♪♪♪♪♪ Professor. Professor. Let me out! You will remember your duty. This isn't heroism! You useless sod. You sit there and shake because you're dependent on drink. Your sick is all over you. Have you ever seen a child starve to death, Professor? No. I have. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices. 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pre-game. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at BJs.com/Mosquite and save 10 cents per gallon for 6 months. Open soon. BJ's. Home of the Save. BJ's. Home of the Save. That's StitchFix.com.