0:00
This is Undaunted Life a Man's Podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
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Let's get into it.
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All right, guys.
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You've got a special return guest of the podcast today.
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His name is Greg Hurwitz.
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So he is a novelist, screenwriter, and comic book writer, and the number one New York Times
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bestselling author of over 20 thrillers to include the wildly popular Orphan X series.
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So the newest title in that series is called Nemesis Guys It Is Out.
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Right now, check it out in the show notes, but amongst all those things, probably his
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biggest accolade is that he's been on the podcast twice before.
0:49
So episodes of 428 and 566, go back and check those out.
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And the reason why I want you to go back and listen to those, especially at 428, the first
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time he came on the show, it's like, okay, it's a fiction writer.
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I don't really have fiction writers on the show that often.
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And if you looked at what the interview was and the questions we actually went over, my
1:04
notes did not match what the final product looked like because we weaved in and out of
1:08
a bunch of different subject matters.
1:09
This is a very smart, erudite guy who's very interested in a lot of different topics.
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And we're able to kind of weave in and out a lot of different things.
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And we did that again on this particular podcast.
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So since he's last been on the show, he has done the Gospels series through the Daily
1:23
Wire, which were in Peterson.
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So we talk about that.
1:25
You know, he did the Exodus series because he's a liberal secular Jew who went to Jesuit
1:29
high school, but you know, doesn't have any type of faith background as it pertains to
1:32
Christianity for himself individually.
1:34
So he does the Exodus series and then he's invited back to do the Gospels.
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But there was one gaping hole at the table because Oz Guinness was the only evangelical
1:42
during the Exodus series, but then there were no evangelicals on the Gospels series.
1:47
So we talk about that, why that was, and we talk about why he thinks the gospel stories
1:51
in the gospel history in particular is a story with maximum pressure applied because he thinks
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that these are sacred texts.
1:58
He does not consider himself to be an atheist, but as you can tell from our conversation would
2:02
probably not put himself in the Christian camp either, but I do kind of try to pin him
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down on his thoughts on the resurrection because you can't read the four biographical accounts
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of Jesus's life and just come away with, oh yeah, well, that's a guy that said some nice
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things.
2:15
And maybe I can live by that.
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I mean, it's this trilima from C.S. Lewis.
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He's either a liar, a lunatic, or he's Lord.
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And so we do kind of talk about that a little bit and what that looks like.
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Then we get into discussions about the Orphan X series and this latest novel, but again,
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if you don't read fiction or if you're not caught up on all 10, I wanted to make sure
2:31
that this was still going to be interesting to you because there's so many philosophical
2:34
and psychological through points about the main character who is an assassin in this
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particular story because, you know, even this assassin's mentor said the hard part is not
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going to be making you a killer.
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It's going to be keeping you human.
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And there's a lot of ways that Evan, the lead guy of this series is feeling in a very
2:49
different way.
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And this is a very different novel because the guy that is kind of his nemesis, if you
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will in this latest novel, this latest thriller is someone that he cares for deeply.
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But this is a character that is not known for caring for anything deeply aside from evening
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the score.
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And so we've been in and out of a lot of different subject matters.
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I always love having Greg on the show again, guys.
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If you want to check out the newest book, it is in the show notes.
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Check that out.
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But I'm not going to keep him from you any longer.
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So without further ado, let's get into it.
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Greg Hurwitz, I would give you the normal welcome back to the show thing, but you have
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reached an elite level.
3:21
You're in an elite club.
3:22
You were an elite company because you have punched the third hole in your punch card.
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So I don't know for all you hockey fans.
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We got a lot of people listening up in Canada.
3:30
Y'all are the only country that cares about hockey.
3:32
But that's a hat trick, sir, right?
3:34
That's three home runs in one game.
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How does that feel?
3:37
I mean, I know you've gotten some cool accolades, you know, New York Times, let's all that stuff.
3:39
That doesn't matter.
3:40
Third appearance on this show.
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That's got to be incredible for you, right?
3:44
It's a career highlight.
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And I'll also remind you that the rule holds true for soccer, the hat trick rule.
3:50
So it didn't just talk you much.
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Also, sure.
3:52
Yeah.
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Sorry to all the people.
3:54
And that's what's funny about that is I was a collegiate soccer player, but I'm a collegiate
3:56
soccer player that never grew up playing soccer, but that's a story for another day because
4:00
I'm sitting here with one of the preeminent storytellers in existence here, at least in
4:04
the English language.
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And that's you.
4:06
And we are certainly going to get to your latest novel.
4:09
But I would be remiss if I didn't talk about what everyone in my audience would want me
4:12
to ask you from the beginning.
4:14
And that's your involvement with Jordan Peterson's work with the Daily Wire.
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So obviously you were on the Exodus series.
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You were really involved with that.
4:22
And then he invited you back to go over the gospels.
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I still will never forgive you when you and I are sitting at dinner and you refuse to
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tell me what y'all were going to cover after after Exodus.
4:31
It would have cost you nothing and it would have made me cool amongst my friends, but
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we can deal with that later.
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But for you, just tell me a little bit about the process because you go from Exodus, y'all
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don't really know what that's going to be, you just know it's going to be high quality
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with a lot of money and marketing behind it with the Daily Wire.
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It does supremely well.
4:47
I think it was the best thing on the website except for Matt Walsh's documentaries.
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And then you got the gospels, which have superseded even Exodus.
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So let's just start talking about the project and then we'll dig in a little bit further.
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Well, Jordan and I have had a lot of adventures in our life.
5:03
And a lot of those adventures involve us pulling each other into different cultures and ideas
5:09
and streams of meaning.
5:11
And so he really wanted me to do Exodus.
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I was a little hesitant at first to be honest with you because, you know, I'm not a theologian.
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We have some of the greatest minds in theology in the Western world around that table.
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I mean, it was an extraordinary fellowship of men.
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And but, you know, I went and for me, it was really life altering.
5:31
It was incredible to pursue Exodus and to really break down what it represented, not
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just spiritually and not just in a sacred sense, but additionally to think about, well,
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what's the meaning if you view the text as being fractal?
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If you view these stories as being the seeds from which all of Western civilizations grown,
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it means their ramifications are anthropological and they're psychological and they're emotional
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and they're political.
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And everything said in order means that there's a fractal nature to it.
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And so when we were able to hit this from all these angles, you know, we had like, you
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know, we had the three Jews holding down one end, me, Prager and Shapiro.
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We had, Oz Guinness was spectacular.
6:14
It was great having an evangelical.
6:15
We missed him a lot during Gospels.
6:17
You know, Jordan obviously is incandescently brilliant, you know, Peugeot and James Orr
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and Douglas Headley and Jonathan Peugeot.
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I mean, what an experience, what an experience to be among men of that stature with that
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kind of wisdom and that kind of insight.
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And so it was extraordinary for me.
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It helped me really solidify a lot of my views coming from a more liberal and emphasizing
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liberal meaning, not leftist and not progressive part of the political and cultural spectrum.
6:48
I think that one of the biggest things I took away was an awareness of where the center
6:52
is, what's required for the center to whole and what the role is of the fringe.
6:58
And I'd identify myself as being more on the fringe with a more, more liberal, high trade
7:02
openness input and the fringe doesn't mean something that's lesser or dismissed because
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the fringe has to feed and regulate new information and ideas for the center.
7:13
But for the center to hold, there's a lot of focus that needs to be paid to that and
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attention to be paid to that.
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And so, you know, the minute I got invited back for Gospels, I was a yes.
7:23
We added Bishop Barron, who was incredible.
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We had a lot of good Catholic muscle at the table.
7:28
Cajoe is remarkable, he's, he and I are very close, he's, you know, has become a dear friend.
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But there's a real toughness in his approach.
7:39
Toughness.
7:40
Let me see if I can be more articulate about that.
7:45
There's a sort of masculinity and orthodoxy that feels distinctive and feels really compelling.
7:52
I love the room that it leaves for gray and nuance.
8:00
It's, it's, you know, it's, it's just got a whole different quality to it.
8:03
And the way that he views symbols, I mean, one of the things when Pajoe is on a roll
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and when he's seen things and discussing the use of symbols, you know, it could be like
8:13
you're talking to Carl Jung.
8:15
I mean, he just has an almost, you know, he thinks in narrative, he really does think
8:20
in narrative, which is interesting when he does get on a roll.
8:23
In some ways, I would say he thinks in symbols and archetypal symbols and imagery in a certain
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regard, he's more visual.
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I think I think more narrative.
8:31
And so there's a conflict.
8:32
Look, he's obviously incredibly gifted with stories and storytelling and narrative.
8:36
But his approach is, and what's extraordinary is he'll come upon an image and he'll figure
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out what everything means and what is symbolized within the narrative.
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And it's extraordinary.
8:45
And so, you know, we went around with gospels.
8:47
There was a bit of nervousness, you know, a lot of people have authority structure they
8:52
have to answer to, you know, Bishop Barron.
8:54
It's not just him.
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He's got the whole, you know, glory and power of the Catholic church behind him as someone
9:00
who went to Jesuit high school, even as a Jewish kid.
9:03
I have great regard of familiarity with Catholics.
9:06
You know, Pajoe has a lot to grapple with and contend and interpret from orthodoxy from
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his basis, and then we had like John Vervake, who's a brilliant cognitive psychologist,
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right?
9:18
We had, we kind of jumbled it up, Constantine Kissen rolled in for a couple of days.
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And it was, it was just a kind of amazing experience.
9:26
Now, I'm familiar with the gospels.
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I'd even say probably more familiar with the gospels than even Exodus.
9:32
You know, it's one of my favorite, just on a pure story level.
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It's one of my favorite stories and to be able to really dig into that and take it apart
9:42
and look at it psychologically and look at it.
9:44
What does it say about all the ways that we order ourselves and order the world and what
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are all the ways that it fulfills and hyperlinks back to earlier texts?
9:53
It was just completely intriguing and it was incredibly compelling.
9:57
I just, I loved it.
9:58
Well, and one thing that I remember you saying, I think in your, your intro to, to the gospels
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when you're just kind of introducing yourselves is during Exodus, you felt like you were at
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a table with a bunch of chess grandmasters.
10:09
And I could see like that's, well, what is the, the ultimate fear dream is like when
10:13
you're naked in front of a crowd of people giving a presentation, like it could, I guess
10:16
feel a little bit like that when you're at a table with giants like that.
10:20
But I will say it was a very interesting move, and I don't know if there's any there there,
10:25
but it was a very interesting move to discuss the gospels and not have an evangelical present.
10:32
Not having Oz Guinness there to me seem like a gaping wide open hole, getting Catholic
10:36
representation made made sense to me, obviously, with Bishop Barron.
10:40
But was there any reason in particular why an evangelical was not included in the days?
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He just couldn't make it.
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I mean, we all wanted Oz.
10:47
The schedule didn't work out.
10:49
I mean, he was incredible presence.
10:51
I agree with you, but it was pretty funny because, you know, we definitely, you know, honored
10:58
him in discussions.
10:59
There's a few times that Prager said, hang on a minute, right?
11:02
We need to come in.
11:03
We need to see our dear friend, Oz Guinness, and we need to present an evangelical perspective.
11:08
You know, I'm very close with the evangelical community, too.
11:10
I have a lot of really close relationships there, and I would love to have that in the
11:14
mix.
11:15
You know, Oz has this sort of, he's just sort of like beaming with goodness.
11:18
He has that like shiny evangelical wonder and marvel, and it's so distinctive.
11:24
It's the energy evangelical energy is so distinctive, and it just is like, it just emanates.
11:31
I would have loved to have him there.
11:33
You know, he's incredible.
11:34
And the other thing I love about him is he's an incredible advocate of champion of America.
11:41
He's an incredible champion advocate of the Jews in Judaism.
11:45
Like he's so just filled with goodwill, you know, so, you know, but look, we had, we did
11:51
have some other power forwards in there, and it was really fun.
11:55
And it was, you know, it was an honor.
11:56
I went in, you know, and I'm also glad that I can, I can, I hope that I can provide a
12:02
little bit of onboarding maybe for people from the secular world or people who are a
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little bit less familiar to have them not be afraid to go up and encounter and deal with
12:13
and grapple with and contend with these narratives.
12:16
You can't understand anything if you grew up in the West.
12:19
I mean, it's so funny.
12:20
Like, even if we're saying separation to church and state, you know, we don't want
12:24
the Bibles in schools and it's like, the Bible needs to be in, how the hell are you going
12:27
to read Dante without the Bible?
12:30
How are you going to understand the Bible?
12:32
Exactly.
12:33
How are you going to understand the Constitution in a lot of regards without understanding like
12:36
the seminal role that Exodus played and how, how power needs to be disseminated, why minimal
12:41
possible forces essential, right, why a covenant has to be freely entered into.
12:47
And so for me, there's also a straight and this is not to diminish the incredible holy
12:52
and sacred value of the text, but there's just an incredible educational intellectual
12:59
aspect, artistic of getting to and grappling with that.
13:03
And that's something I had.
13:04
I had that from going to Jesuit, um, I school and first year, you know, was like, you know,
13:08
sit your ass down.
13:09
We're reading the Old Testament.
13:10
Okay.
13:11
That was my first formal training and anything that had to do with Judaism.
13:15
Second semester.
13:16
Guess what?
13:17
Sit down.
13:18
We're doing the New Testament.
13:19
Then Christian morality.
13:20
And so when I arrived at literature, which was my love, you know, mythology, literature,
13:25
sculpture, painting, you know, I had this basis that was completely necessary.
13:30
And look, I, like no one can educate as well as the Jesuits, man, they're just a marvel.
13:35
And so I was a huge benefit of that, you know, in a lot of ways, I feel like I have kind
13:38
of like a Jewish brain with Jesuit training.
13:41
It's like this weird combination.
13:44
And then as I've said, for years, two of my closest friends, like true brothers, my life
13:49
or death, you know, the life or death phone calls that I've had to make are two guys who
13:55
are from evangelical tradition.
13:57
I think in a lot of ways that in addition, my relationship with Jordan has played a huge
14:02
role in my, uh, opening to different viewpoints, my embrace from the very beginning of a lot
14:10
of conservatism, even as a liberal.
14:11
It's like you're not one or the other.
14:14
And my, my understanding and willingness to try to occupy different perspectives and to
14:19
reach into the wisdom of different ways of making meaning and figure out the conversion
14:24
and figure out sort of the, you know, the way and the glory of that kind of thinking
14:29
and connect it back.
14:30
So I mean, I mean, you're hitting on so many good points because as a Westerner, you can't
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reach Shakespeare or Gerta or Dostoevsky or any of that without a biblical foundation.
14:42
That's one with.
14:43
And then you look at someone like us, Guinness, you gave him a great compliment because he's,
14:47
he's, he's bright.
14:48
And when he was on this show, very, very bright and all the ways that you can be bright from
14:52
personality, but he's also very deliberate talker.
14:54
He's not a speed talker like someone like me.
14:56
So he's not performative as much, but also he grew up in around the rape of man king.
15:02
Like he's seen some of the most depraved, low down things that we can get.
15:07
And he didn't come to the conclusion that these were just a bunch of highly evolved chimps
15:10
that figured out fire and pants and language.
15:12
I was doing this to one another, that there was another, there was another layer.
15:17
There was another force there.
15:18
And so even in that discussion, reminded me of a quote that you did from the beginning
15:22
of the Gospels, you said the Gospels particular, they're like a story with maximal pressure
15:28
applied.
15:29
So obviously you're a wordsmith, but man, that's stuck with me.
15:33
Maximum pressure applied, because I think I'm trying to remember from Jordan speaking
15:37
about it.
15:38
It's like, okay, the, the story of the crucifixion is the story of maximal injustice meeting
15:44
maximal punishment.
15:45
There's no more punitive layer of the least deserving individual.
15:51
Exactly.
15:52
So it has all these horrific layers to it, which, you know, even if you're a secularist,
15:56
you can respect that just from a narrative standpoint, storytelling standpoint.
15:59
But take me to why you think the Gospels, you know, the historical accounts of the life
16:04
of a Middle Eastern Jewish construction worker, you know, for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
16:09
what is the maximal pressure applied?
16:11
What do you mean by that?
16:12
Well, what I mean is, you know, I was thinking about this a lot, you know, going back.
16:18
Peugeot and I've been talking a lot about, about Genesis lately and, you know, going
16:22
back and looking at Keenan Abel.
16:24
You know, Keenan Abel is like half a page.
16:27
Oh my gosh.
16:28
And you can't even believe what it contains and what it holds.
16:31
And we can detour into that in a minute.
16:33
I mean, what's funny is that we're opening a discussion about nemesis with this because
16:37
nemesis has a lot of these themes or a lot of tendrils you can see.
16:40
I would not have written nemesis probably in the manner that I did were not for my participation
16:46
in Exodus.
16:47
But, you know, if you look at Keenan Abel, let's say we're welcoming everybody.
16:52
For some people who believe this is the word of God, there's some people who are literalists,
16:56
there's some people who are contextualists and there's some people who are secularists.
16:59
Either way, and however you want to cut it, the pressure, my maximum pressure, I'm talking
17:03
about what happens to Cole.
17:04
If you put it under maximum pressure for 10,000 years, it turns into a diamond and a diamond
17:09
is also fractal.
17:10
Every part of a diamond is the same as every other part of it, right?
17:13
That's why when there's a flaw, we freak out.
17:16
And so in Keenan Abel, you have like three paragraphs that tells you the story essentially
17:21
of what happens with grievance and the way that grievance destroys the future.
17:26
And we can kind of return to that.
17:28
The gospels and the story of Jesus is in some ways, even if you merely believe it's an evolutionarily
17:35
selected story, which I don't, I believe it's a sacred text.
17:40
But the fact that it has survived and condensed and been that it has survived and it has thrived
17:46
under unbelievable pressure, under unbelievable competition, under unbelievable odds, or whether
17:52
it is something that's distilled right into the beauty of a symbol.
17:55
And Pezio talks about how a symbol is something that unites and uplifts, right?
17:59
Of course, the cross on the altar.
18:01
And what is diabolical is that which disintegrates and lowers.
18:05
So that's a very interesting frame when we think about like what the objections are to
18:09
postmodernism, right?
18:10
It's a very fragmentary, dissolving approach to things and the perspectives.
18:17
And here's the story, this bright shining example of the archetypal hero myth that
18:23
is alarming and surprising and shocking and everything perfectly in its place.
18:29
Like what a bizarre thing that we have the whole West is essentially based.
18:34
Of course, there's the Judeo in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
18:38
But the fact that the primary symbol of worship in the West is a God embodied as a man at
18:43
his greatest moment of defeat, which of course isn't a moment of defeat.
18:47
It's not like Muhammad writing in on a horse with a flaming sword.
18:51
Like what is worshiped is the lowest.
18:53
The crown on the head isn't a crown of gold, it's a crown of thorns.
18:57
King of the Jews is a sneer that's actually the truth.
19:00
It's such an unbelievably radical just inversion and fulfillment of human identity.
19:09
And it's perfect.
19:11
And so it's been sustained and compressed.
19:13
And look, even the fact that we have the story that's told, you know, primarily from four
19:18
different perspectives, which have some overlap and inconsistencies in a way that makes it,
19:23
it makes it seeing all the more as this approximation of these different avenues around it.
19:28
So look, it's a marvel, it's just a marvel as a, you know, even if we don't get into
19:32
the religious aspect of it, it's a literary, creative, mythological, anthropological marvel.
19:39
It's just extraordinary.
19:40
I mean, I don't have to tell you that, but that's a big part of the approach and what
19:45
I mean by saying maximal pressure.
19:47
What other story has survived this much over this many years and one in competition and
19:53
been like whittled and tested and prevailed through a policy of like non-course of violence?
19:59
It's impossible.
20:00
It's an impossible story.
20:01
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Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
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I mean, you talked about also as well about the level of definitional collapse societally
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that we're going through right now and how that is, you know, we have to look at the
21:45
things of the sacred and the symbolic and the mythological and the religious and see
21:49
how it all applies, but eventually you do eventually have to come down on one side or
21:53
the other on a lot of these things.
21:55
And so my curiosity for someone like you is I'm always interested whenever I find a biblical
22:00
scholar like a New Testament scholar, that is also an atheist.
22:04
It's like, all right, well, that's, that's an interesting thing, how you could, you know,
22:07
know all this information, but you have not put your belief in that.
22:10
But for you, you spent a lot of time and if you didn't, you faked it real well, but you
22:15
spent a lot of time digging into these sacred texts and Jesus doesn't leave a lot of room
22:20
for ambiguity.
22:21
It's not follow me and or do whatever else you want, follow whoever you want, and you
22:25
might get the heaven who the heck knows, you know, we'll all find out in the end.
22:29
It's like I'm the way, the truth in the life.
22:31
The reason that he was killed was because he claimed to be God and the Jews thought that
22:34
be blasphemous.
22:36
And so he was crucified on Rome across at the behest of the Jewish and he hadn't sent
22:40
Peter and rights, but for, for Greg Hurwitz specifically, who is Jesus to you when you
22:45
see the gospel story, when you think about the, the impossible thing that is the resurrection,
22:51
what do you think about all that?
22:55
I don't think I actually know enough to give you a concrete answer.
22:59
I mean, I will add, I'm not an atheist, you know, the Prager like to needle me a bunch
23:03
about being an atheist secularist, but I'm not, I have, you know, I even when I was younger
23:11
and raised in a very, fairly vehement culture and family of atheism, I was always agnostic.
23:19
I was always drawn to first like the romantic poets and American trans and dentalists and
23:24
then young.
23:25
I mean, that's a big part of my relationship with Jordan.
23:27
Jordan taught me personality psychology and then young.
23:31
And for me, young sort of takes one's hand after in a way that Freud clearly doesn't
23:36
or is an interest in him with religion and carries, carries or carried me down right
23:41
into this bastion of spiritual thought.
23:43
And he explains things psychologically, psychologically and intellectually in a certain sense, like
23:51
what does Jungian synchronicity mean?
23:53
And there's all these translations.
23:54
So when I talk to my friends who were evangelicals, it's like Jungian synchronicity is like when
23:58
an evangelical says it's God's way.
24:01
It's just described in terms that I understood.
24:03
And I'd say at the bottom, I was sort of met by C.S. Lewis and C.S. Lewis.
24:08
I consider, I mean, first of all, because he comes from atheism, the language that he coaches,
24:14
his belief in is, is just extraordinarily resonant with me.
24:19
But also I feel like he sort of like takes the hand off from Jung.
24:23
He's a master psychologist, too.
24:25
What is screw tape?
24:26
But a master psychologist.
24:27
Oh my gosh.
24:28
You want to see all the inner workings of the human mind?
24:29
Exactly.
24:30
And so he sort of takes the hand and carries up and out that way.
24:35
You know, and so for me, do I, I believe that there is an overwhelming and sacred power
24:41
in these texts, there's no question in my mind.
24:44
You know, I also know that I'm very identified and proud of the fact that I'm Jewish, even
24:51
if I was raised much more in a culturally Jewish, intellectually Jewish background.
24:56
That's a big source of pride for me.
24:59
It's a weird word, it's a big source of my, let's just say, my identity that feels integral
25:04
to me, right?
25:08
And then yet I have this huge affinity for Christian thought and Christian thinkers and
25:12
for evangelicalism and Catholicism and orthodoxy.
25:15
And there's this story that has very clearly a claim on my intention and focus in a way
25:22
that is deeply meaningful in my life.
25:24
And so what and how that all comes together, I don't really have a clear answer.
25:28
I'm not sure I understand it all well enough of how to reconcile all that.
25:32
But you know, it's, it's a big part of my perspective.
25:36
And I think, you know, as I keep moving my way imperfectly into better understanding
25:41
of the way I fit in the world.
25:42
And with what my relationship is with all this, which is, I think idiosyncratic, I think
25:47
it is more on the fringe.
25:48
I think people have different relationships and routes in and CS Lewis writes about this
25:53
beautifully in mere Christianity.
25:56
I think it's something that I don't, I can't offer you something that's as, that's as
26:00
crisply delineated as perhaps some Christian thinkers might like.
26:04
Well, the crisp delineation has been what people have been trying to nail your buddy Jordan
26:08
on for a very long time because it can seem complicated.
26:11
But at the end of the day, it's like, we are sinners in need of a savior.
26:14
We can't, the law can't fix us.
26:17
The law is a mirror.
26:18
You can't clean your, you can't clean them off your face with a mirror.
26:21
It just shows you that you're dirty and that you need payment for that sin debt to be in
26:25
the presence of a holy and just father.
26:27
And so like with Jordan, I mean, last year, well, when he was with Alex O'Connor, he talked
26:30
about how, you know, he believes in the resurrection.
26:32
He believed that Jesus actually did die and actually did resurrect from that.
26:35
Okay.
26:36
And then this year on another show, I came here, a diary of a CEO, he said, he believes
26:40
that Jesus is God.
26:41
He said it rather emphatically.
26:43
But you know, there are parts of scripture that say, well, even the demons believe in
26:45
shutter.
26:46
The difference is a word that I learned from Pastor Joby, who I mentioned off air, which
26:50
is Pestuo, which is not belief that something is true, but belief in that it is true.
26:57
Because it is one thing for, for me to put my faith in a chair that is sitting over there
27:01
that I believe that that is a chair.
27:04
It's another thing entirely for me to go over there and trust that I can lower my weight,
27:09
transfer the trust from me to the chair and put my faith in the chair.
27:13
And so that's the difference with Jesus for all of us, which is he did die on a cross.
27:18
He was resurrected on the third day and it meant something, it didn't, it wasn't just
27:21
a thing that happened that we can't explain that has some significance, perhaps in a myriad
27:26
of different categories.
27:27
It's that it means something for us individually.
27:30
And so for me, we talked about last time on terms of big five, I'm a weirdo because I'm
27:34
really high in consciousness and I'm really high in openness.
27:37
And so people that are only high in openness, I can see their language, but then I get really
27:41
frustrated with them because I'm like, I'm really conscientious.
27:44
I want to get it done and I want to get it done early.
27:46
And so that's, that's personally my, my prayer for you as, as my friend is that you would
27:51
receive that gift of faith because you depending on your theological background, you know,
27:55
faith is a gift.
27:56
It's not necessarily something you strive for, but that one day it may all these different,
28:01
you know, disparate pathways come to the same thing and it comes to the foot of the cross
28:04
or, you know, the mouth of the, the empty tomb as it were.
28:08
So anything you want to say to wrap up gospels before we move on to nemesis?
28:13
Well, it's interesting, you know, one of the things, first of all, I appreciate the well
28:19
wishes.
28:20
I'm glad we can talk, you know, sort of just frankly, I think it's so important and it's
28:24
so rare.
28:27
It's increasingly rare that people can talk across different faiths and structures of
28:31
meaning with great respect and regard.
28:33
And so it's important.
28:35
I think it's, it's an important thing you do in role model on your show and on your new
28:39
podcast as well, there's a real openness to that that I think is, is essential and that
28:45
embodies the principles and the values that you are, you know, champion championing.
28:52
You know, it's funny when we talk about the clearances, I spent a lot of time at Pejoe,
28:56
I mentioned this in Genesis and look at the ways that Genesis is then reflected in Jesus,
29:02
especially in the last moments of Jesus, like the thorns when they leave the garden or the
29:05
thorns on the throat, like there's all this interweeping of that.
29:09
And so there's a mirror through both, you know, the Judaic thought and the Christian
29:14
thought around this stuff.
29:16
The one thing I've been very interested in are the ways in which a total absence of these
29:21
notions.
29:22
If you remove any absence or notion of original sin, regardless of what your definition is,
29:26
is it, is it, you know, from the fall, is it, you know, is it a definition that's that's
29:31
strained or filtered through Jesus, we're really stuck.
29:35
And I was thinking a lot about, you know, number one, there's original sin.
29:40
If you don't believe in original sin, if you don't have a starting point of great humility
29:43
of the fact that we are completely flawed and that we need to advocate and aspire to
29:49
something greater than us that we will forever fail at, but should still aspire towards
29:53
it, you can really see how a sense of totalitarian or fascist thought can set in from that.
29:59
Because all you have to do is like, if you're on the right side of history, all you have
30:04
to do is measure up to your own code of one, right?
30:07
And however you sat and ordered the universe in your own way, you're the only measure of
30:11
it.
30:12
You don't have to answer to anybody or for anything.
30:13
If you're not starting with a presumption of how deeply flawed we are, and the other
30:18
thing is, if there's no clearing mechanism increasingly in our culture, so social media
30:23
means that we never forget anything, but cancellation means that we never forgive anything.
30:29
Exactly.
30:30
And so what happens?
30:31
We're stuck, right?
30:32
I'm a perfect individual until I'm not and then someone's just an outcast forever.
30:36
And so there's this incredible tension.
30:38
And those things don't just go away, right?
30:40
They get mapped on to other things.
30:41
And I think some of the excesses of the green movement, right, not the fact that we have
30:47
to take care of our skies and seas and our fields and streams and that we should, you
30:50
know, steward our environments and have charge over it.
30:55
But the raising of it above man and the sort of cowering and fear from what will come from
31:00
the environment to me is a sort of transference of original sin in a lot of ways.
31:05
You know, mommy mother nature is mad at us.
31:07
It's a little paganistic.
31:09
And I think that there's certain principles that if we don't have embedded in the kind
31:13
of meaning that we have in the West and in the world as humans, if we believe we all
31:18
have individual worth that can't be diminished by anything else, we can't just port those
31:22
off and think they're going to go away.
31:24
They're foundational.
31:25
And if you don't have a mechanism for clearing your sin or your missteps in some way, then
31:31
what happens is I think that we fold in on negative emotion that's narcissistic, anxiety
31:37
and guilt and, you know, depression, they're inward turned, right, or you walk around and
31:43
self-lagulate a lot or you get canceled and you say you're going to do all the work and
31:47
you have to reexamine everything.
31:48
It's very inward facing as opposed to I screwed that up.
31:52
I have to come clean completely before myself, you know, somebody else before God.
31:58
And then I have to clear it and move on and continue to do good.
32:01
It can't just cycle back in an endless circle of self-lagulation to prove your virtue level.
32:07
Well, I mean, you talk about the clearing mechanism.
32:10
So I was reminded when I took the big five, you have kind of the main five, but then you
32:14
have a little breakdowns underneath.
32:15
And so I got a zero on agreeableness out of a hundred, a zero, which is hilarious.
32:20
I got a one on compassion and I got like a four out of a hundred on politeness.
32:24
Now the first two, I was like, yeah, it makes sense, but politeness, I'm like, I'm very
32:28
yes, ma'am, no ma'am.
32:29
Yes, I will be there on time and yeah, I'll get it done.
32:31
Like I'm very polite.
32:32
And then I started to dig in a little bit.
32:33
It's like, oh, I don't care about politeness when it comes to someone else's benefit.
32:39
And so for me, I'm not going to look at the person, you know, that's if someone fell out
32:44
of their wheelchair, right, I would knock you over in order to go help them out, right?
32:48
Like that's like, I'm going to go.
32:49
I have so much compassion for that person because they can't help themselves to a degree.
32:53
But it's the people that can help themselves and do have the mental and physical abilities.
32:58
And they're not using that are not utilizing them properly.
33:01
I just have no time for that.
33:02
And so I can be very impolite as it pertains to that.
33:05
The thing about what the law shows us is that we can't fix ourselves.
33:09
There is no right amount of good living, right amount of money we could give away and right
33:13
amount of people that we help back into their wheelchairs that we can do to make ourselves
33:17
clean and wholly and pure.
33:19
And so when you start evaluating worldviews, it's origin, meaning morality, destiny, origin,
33:24
where does everything come from?
33:25
Meaning why is anything here morality?
33:27
How do we distinguish between good and evil and destiny?
33:30
Where do you go when you die?
33:31
Every worldview's got to answer those four questions.
33:34
And then you basically live by the one that you believe in the most.
33:37
And so we can wax fairly poetic on this.
33:40
And really if I was sitting there and you were drinking vodka and I was drinking whiskey
33:43
because that would be the right order of things, then we could do that.
33:46
But I would be remiss Greg if we didn't get to your 10th novel in this series.
33:51
Look at this thing.
33:52
This is what a $40 book feels like if you're in Canada, right?
33:55
This is the 10th orphan ex novel.
33:57
It's nemesis.
33:58
So you know the drill, give us the 30,000 foot overview.
34:02
And then I've got very specific questions that still will not provide any spoilers.
34:06
So ready, set go.
34:07
All right, so for your viewers who are not familiar with orphan acts, Evan Smoke, he's
34:12
someone who's taken out of a foster home at the age of 12.
34:15
And he was trained in a silo and an off the books program buried deep beneath the DoD to
34:21
be an assassin to go where the US government cannot and do things that they cannot be seen
34:26
to do.
34:27
And they kill people.
34:28
They're not allowed to kill.
34:29
And he's a full cut out man, fully expendable.
34:32
It's why they pulled kids out of foster homes.
34:34
They wanted disposable weapons if they die, no one's going to miss them.
34:37
If they're captured and tortured, no one's going to come after them.
34:40
But the twist is that Evans Handler, Jack Johns becomes like a father figure to him.
34:46
And he loves this kid.
34:48
And so when Evans take it out of this, you know, rough, rough ass foster home in East
34:52
Baltimore and he's raised, Jack kind of puts him in the world.
34:55
He teaches him it's not just a scream and knife fighting and demolition breaching.
35:00
It's foreign languages.
35:02
It's accents.
35:03
It's etiquette.
35:04
It's military history.
35:05
It's philosophy.
35:07
All of these things are pinned to the ground.
35:08
I describe Evan as a blue collar Renaissance man, or I use the phrase from the OSS, which
35:14
is the, you know, pre predecessor to the CIA.
35:18
And they said their ideal recruit is a PhD who could win a bar fight.
35:22
That's right.
35:23
He's smart, but everything's in service of mission.
35:26
And the one thing Jack told him is, again and again, the hard part will not be making
35:30
you a killer.
35:31
That part is keeping you human.
35:33
The orphan X series is a story about one man's quest to move from being an assassin whose
35:38
life is contained by a very rigid set of 10 assassins commandments into learning to
35:44
speak what he was never taught.
35:45
He was never taught to speak the strange language of intimacy.
35:48
It's a movement towards him becoming more human.
35:51
And each book, each mission is a step in that direction.
35:55
At some point he's fled the program before the series opens because his moral compass
35:59
isn't aligned with it, and he's basically a pro bono assassin.
36:03
He's got an encrypted phone number one eight five five to nowhere.
36:07
You can call the phone number and you can see who answers in real life.
36:11
And he helps people with nowhere to turn who are totally desperate.
36:14
Now in this process of becoming human, he has one very, very dear friend.
36:19
He's very much a lone wolf, but his closest friend is a crusty old unity diver, you know,
36:26
preceding the plank holder guys and seal team six, armor and ordinance guy Tommy Stojak.
36:33
It's his best and dearest friend.
36:35
They have this bond of trust between them that's sort of like the first friend who Evan
36:39
had haven't been raised in salt and to be alone and to assassinate people and to uphold
36:45
the standards of perfection at the cost of having very little intimacy or community.
36:50
And so nemesis is about a point where his code and his friend's code come into collision.
36:57
And every time Evan's code is coming to collision with somebody else, it's a mission and he
37:01
goes out and kills them.
37:03
And so for the first time now in this process of becoming more human, he's opened himself
37:07
up to Tommy and Tommy's opposite him in a whole variety of ways like Tommy was is rural.
37:13
He's very red state by definition, Tommy's a Christian, you know, Evan's ambiguous what
37:18
he believes. And these two guys have this collision course of these codes colliding and
37:24
Evan is going after Tommy and we're not sure who the hell we're supposed to root for.
37:29
And on the midst of it, Tommy's got himself in a rat's nest of trouble in his rural town,
37:34
trying to oversee some young men who got themselves into terrible trouble, some of some of which
37:39
they appear to be just reprehensible.
37:41
And Evan is coming on like an unstoppable force and behind all of this, there's an even
37:47
greater threat that is stalking them even as these two alphas are circling themselves.
37:51
All right. So let's dig in a little bit further into that because as I've told everyone before,
37:56
I'm not intelligent. I am verbally intelligent. And so it's hard for me to read, but I can
37:59
listen real good, right? And so I was listening to nemesis. And there was something that just
38:04
kind of pinged my ears and I don't know if it was intentional or if it was just a throw
38:07
away. But you know, obviously the hard part is not going to be turning you into a killer.
38:11
It's going to be keeping you human. But early on in the book again with none of these questions
38:15
about spoilers, guys. So if you have not read nemesis yet, it is in the show notes, you need
38:18
to go pick it up or get it on audio or whatever and check it out for yourself. Boy, but he's
38:23
at, you know, like a shot show type thing, like a convention center. And to get around
38:28
the facial recognition software, he puts in like some inserts into his mouth, you know,
38:32
so his molars or his jawline or would be different or something like that. And he kind of like,
38:36
you know, makes it to where he can't be recognized or whatever. But he said he catches a view
38:42
of himself and he has like a better jawline. And like you can kind of get the sense of
38:47
because we're hearing a stream of consciousness is that he likes how the way he looks makes
38:51
him feel. And I was like, all right, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is an assassin.
38:56
This is a guy that you call him, you know, got his card from somewhere and he goes and,
39:00
you know, evens the score as it were. But here he is looking at himself in the mirror and
39:04
almost like all at once understands vanity. And he just likes the way he looks in the
39:10
mirror and how it makes him feel. Was that like a setup for what we see later in the
39:14
book? Or was that just kind of like a continuation of something from the other nine novels?
39:18
Yeah, it's a pretty perspicacious question there. To me, I describe Evan a lot in every
39:26
book I say average size, average build, just an ordinary guy, not too handsome. He's not
39:32
reacher. He's not this big bad ass. He's not James Bond, where he's super swab and charming.
39:37
He blends in and he's very plain. And I think that part of what he saw when he put this
39:41
in and his job became more handsome and he was striking is almost a different premonition
39:46
of what it would be like if he was a human who didn't have forgettable features. It almost
39:51
made him, you know, embodied in a way as like a real person who he could see because so much
39:57
of his identity is about receding and being unforgettable. And so to me, it was less about
40:03
a moment of a vanity though I think that is an apt way to describe it. But it's this flicker
40:08
of like, what would that be like if I had if my appearance was something that mattered
40:12
to me and I looked good and I could look that way and have a look or appearance that's more
40:18
handsome and striking your attention to me. It's almost like I picture Evan a lot like
40:22
he's got his face up to the glass, the aquarium glass, and he's looking in ordinary people
40:28
who can leave these ordinary lives that he can never have for himself, but he can be
40:33
the wolf who hunts wolves to protect them. And so it's this sort of glimpse across of
40:37
him is a, you know, it's like he's Pinocchio wants to be a real boy. It was a glimpse of
40:41
him as a real boy.
40:43
So that what's interesting about that as well is it does really relate to the conflict between
40:48
Evan and Tommy that you, you know, is the center point of nemesis. And you're exactly
40:53
right. There are certain points where you're just like, you don't know who to root for.
40:57
And it's kind of like if you watch a show like Breaking Bad, at some point in those
41:00
five seasons, you have stopped rooting for goodness and morality and you're rooting for
41:06
Heisenberg, right? And he's a horrible person, right? His wife in the show, right? She becomes
41:12
kind of this very off putting character. And the actress that plays her is like, I will
41:16
get basically a costed in public for how horrible I was on the show. And she's like, Hey, by
41:21
the way, I'm not her. And Heisenberg, this is bad. He's a murderer. Like he's dealing
41:27
death to kids, but I don't want to get off. This is about Breaking Bad. But here's the
41:31
thing that I couldn't quite figure out, Greg, is because there's, there's all these, there's
41:35
all this tangled past with Evan and his father. Okay. So that's just sitting in this series
41:40
is kind of his, his deadbeat father, who's aware he's a deadbeat, but doesn't really
41:44
know how to get out seemingly.
41:46
What I couldn't figure out is Tommy, a photo negative of the dad that Evan wants is Tommy
41:53
an uncle that was around. And when he was around, he had such a huge impact, but he just wasn't
41:58
around enough to, to be the main guy in your life. Is this like an older brother like 10
42:03
years older, where he was, he was just far enough removed, but you could still grab him
42:07
by his shirt every now and then as he was on his way out the door, I couldn't exactly
42:12
figure what category to put Tommy in because he certainly wasn't just a mentor. You know
42:16
what I mean? To Evan? Yeah, to Evan. No, I think, I think the older brother metaphor
42:23
is an apt one. You know, Evan doesn't have, aside from Jack Johns, Evan doesn't have
42:28
authority figures around him, right? And he's, he's in a lot of ways is trained to not even
42:35
be an alpha, but to just be outside of any dominance hierarchy, he's outside it and can
42:40
therefore dominate it without having to compete almost.
42:43
And so early, there's a, there's a warmth and a human knowing to Tommy. Tommy's integrated
42:49
in his community in a way that Evan's not, you know, Tommy runs the, the veterans parade
42:54
in Vegas. People love Tommy. He tips big at bars. People remember him. He's got a big
42:58
personality. He's got a lot of young whipper snappers who he's brought up and mentored.
43:03
He knows the police chief's wife, like he's that guy. And I think for Evan, it's a bit
43:08
of a knowing. I mean, I think they're eye to eye when it comes to power, but I think,
43:14
or certainly lethality, but Tommy does have an aura of being an older brother, a sort
43:20
of warmer figure. And but when they, so when they break, it's just, it's, it's this brutal
43:26
personal sort of jaggedness and Evan's God. Because here he is up against, you know, the
43:32
one friend who he made and can rely on in so many ways.
43:36
And then we see Tommy doing that for these kids, right? Because Tommy made a promise
43:40
to one of his buddies in the Navy that when he died, he would look after his kids, you
43:44
know, at some point in the kids, one of his kids has called him and he's in a whole mess
43:48
of trouble. And Tommy has to go out there. And these kids are screw ups and he's got
43:52
to see what the ground truth is in this small community, play by the rules of this small
43:57
town that he knows, he knows how to speak the language of the town and try and set these
44:01
boys in shape. But what they've done is so horrific that Evans coming after them in addition
44:06
to Tommy.
44:07
Yeah, and I mean, the code is what takes Tommy to that town to begin with, because it's one
44:14
thing to, to, you know, promise something to someone that's dying. And it's another thing
44:18
to actually like follow through on it. And it's, it's this inner honor, this fear to
44:23
that you need in order to do something like that. But at one point, Tommy says to Evan,
44:28
because without your code, you're just a murderer. It was a question that he asked Evan, and
44:33
that is a question that Evan didn't seem because Evan seems to have answers to a lot
44:37
of questions. That was a question that seemed to stop the character in his tracks, because
44:41
in that moment, it's like, okay, at some point along the way, you justified killing people.
44:47
You know, he doesn't seem to have the Judeo-Christian ethic that these are image bearers of God,
44:51
that he's, you know, sending to the, to the grave. It's just, you know, bad people, bad
44:56
people die, like as simple caveman math as you can get. But talk to us a little bit more
45:01
about this, this, this divergence of codes, or I guess convergence of codes between Tommy
45:07
and Evan and how it kind of brings them together full speed.
45:10
Well, one of the things I've learned from my various sprelunking into the culture around
45:17
political and cultural matters, and it's usually to try and work towards unity, right, and
45:21
work towards a higher value set in America and build bridges. I do a lot of that work.
45:27
But one of my refranges become reality is where ideology goes to die. You can't maintain
45:33
ideology. You know, I think we should fix the world from a film, the blank, progressive,
45:39
liberal, conservative, libertarian perspective. You go into the messy real world and you deal
45:43
with messy real humans. And if you still want the solution that's the best solution, it's
45:48
not going to be from a rigid and unyielding application of abstract ideological principles.
45:53
It doesn't work that way. And likewise, how we change our mind, it's not from having often,
46:00
usually, over matters that are profound, meaning the ways that we make meaning in the world.
46:06
We don't change our mind by hearing something that's beautifully argued. We don't, it's
46:10
not from somebody sending us 15 articles proving some point that they have or some peer reviewed
46:14
journal article. How we change in ways that are foundational and transformative are through
46:20
the guise of personal relationships that are trusted. And so a lot, this is something that
46:25
I've observed a lot politically. I have too many friends who are all around the spectrum
46:30
politically to ever have a situation that I'm going to stop talking to somebody over who
46:34
they voted for or what their position is on, you know, a law that is, it just doesn't
46:40
make any sense. And when you have people who are your people who are life and death friends,
46:44
the way Tommy is for Evan, and when your code collides with them, that relationship is what
46:50
makes you question your code or your ideology or the beliefs that you believe you're holding
46:57
to and tacking to like a North Star. If there's somebody who you know is good, is deeply good,
47:03
and they're having disagreement, there's a heart, you know, a friend, a friend also is
47:07
a mirror, a friend can hold up a mirror. And you know, Tommy says to Evan at one point,
47:11
you know, a friend is someone who's right when they tell you you're wrong. And that's
47:16
a great definition. That's where a lot of our our growth comes from is there's something
47:21
doesn't make any sense. There's a huge altercation. Evan's code means more to him than virtually
47:26
anything else in his life. And yet, Tommy, right, Tommy's been with him. He's drank bourbon
47:33
with him, you know, wild turkey with him around a fire pet. Tommy's given him his guns. When
47:38
he's been up [inaudible] Creek, Tommy shows up and posts up in a sniper perch on a roof and covers
47:43
a sex. Like this is Tommy. This isn't about a code and the collision of those things and
47:48
the breaking and the yielding into something that's new. And look, the way this book ends
47:53
is is pretty shocking. It ends differently than any other orphan ex book. And nothing's
47:57
going to be the same at the end of this. And you know, what all of that is is his collision
48:01
with Tommy and and what what he takes away from and how that transforms him with what
48:07
he has to see. Not just about Tommy, but how Tommy is moving through the world and moving
48:12
through this terrible, deadly predicament that's happening in the small town.
48:17
When I think that's where you have the the they're they're in a quandary there with their
48:25
codes, right? Capital C code, but that also leads to capital immorality. And there's a
48:30
character that shows up for a short stint in this book named Aragon. And he mentions
48:35
that moral and strategic are the same thing. It's kind of a throwaway line, but it's another
48:40
one of those lines that just kind of was like sticky in my brain. And so if I could have
48:45
a conversation with Aragon, I'd be like, do tell, like, tell me more. And so I can't talk
48:49
to him. I have to talk to you. So moral and strategic. Same thing. Yes.
48:53
Well, I think that strategy, strategic thinking, strategic involvement with other people with
49:01
your community, with how you orient your life with your family, with your parents, with your
49:05
spouse, with your kids, the longest term strategy that is followed in the greatest long term
49:12
is indistinguishable from me from morality. You can have short term strategy. You can
49:18
screw someone over in business and walk away with a hundred grand. And that's a great short
49:22
term strategy if what you care about is having one more common your bank account that day.
49:26
But that's going to kill the long term game. And that's going to have repercussions. And
49:30
it's going to have repercussions, not just because somebody won't work with you or the
49:32
law might come for you. But it's also going to be because you're now, it's fruit of a
49:37
poisonous tree. You now have money that's ill earned, that's gathering that the rest
49:42
of your life is off the basis of this lie. And so, you know, one of the things that morality
49:49
does is it's a shortcut to thinking through like, I've been in a couple really impossible
49:54
situations in my life or times that have been incredibly dark where it seems like options
50:00
are limited. I've been in some circumstances that have been truly life or death. And when
50:04
you're cut all the way down to the marrow, sometimes when everything is lost, all you
50:09
can think about is what's the best possible thing for me to do? I can't weigh which lie
50:14
to tell. I can't weigh which sub strategy to take or which legal, you know, manipulations
50:21
should go into a fact or what I need to pervericate around. Like when you're all the way down,
50:25
like, you know, neck deep in the dirt. A lot of times it's just like, what's the best
50:31
purest highest thing that I can do right now? That's all that you have. And so, crises
50:36
have a way of cutting us down to that, you know, then we get more comfortable. And there
50:40
are some times where it's like, you can take your shortcut, you can just fudge a little
50:44
here and you can lie a little here and you can do that. And then we're back into that
50:47
game of whether you want to take, you know, shorter term strategy. But to carry that out
50:54
and across time, that's what morality is. Morality is saying here's the best way to orient yourself
50:59
in the world for maximum good. Even if the maximum good means you might die, right? But
51:05
you know, you, you, it's how to conduct yourself under circumstances that you stand on your
51:10
own two feet in an orientation with the highest good, no matter what comes. It's not a guarantee
51:14
of success, certainly.
51:17
Well, that overlaps with the discussion we were having earlier, which is like, okay, where
51:20
does your morality come from? Does it come downstream of Nietzsche or does it come downstream
51:24
for from Moses? Does it come downstream from Jesus or in those types of things? And how
51:28
does that look whenever you're living it out on day to day basis? But also there's an interesting
51:32
through point towards, I believe is toward the end where again, no spoilers here, here
51:37
or so I won't give you any of the details, but Evan is holding a baby. Okay. So you've
51:41
got this guy who's done some pretty nasty things with his hands, right? Some pretty
51:46
brutal things, pretty bloody things with his hands. Now he's holding this baby. And according
51:51
to the book, it says that he felt in that moment, he felt, well, when you're holding
51:55
a baby, whether it's yours or not, when it's yours, you have a gaggle of other things going
51:59
on in your brain, but you're holding newness and purity and potential like ultimate potential.
52:07
What is this thing going to be? I love putting people in an awkward thought experiment of
52:11
if you could be, you know, shot back in time and you're in baby Hitler's nursery and you've
52:16
got a hammer. And if you don't kill baby Hitler, everything that happened in Germany in the
52:21
1930s and 40s is going to still happen and all the Jews are still going to die. Do you
52:25
have a moral obligation to kill that baby? Well, not putting you in that predicament right
52:29
now. It's an interesting thing to talk about over over beers or whiskey, but you're holding
52:33
something that has ultimate potential in this nonfeeling sociopathic killer is not so sociopathic
52:39
and nonfeeling as we thought, because it says explicitly that he felt. Was there something
52:44
there that was, was there gravitas that you were trying to add with that scene? Because
52:48
it was so, it was so potent in my brain as I was kind of imagining him being there.
52:53
Yeah, look, he drops into a different mode when he's holding that baby and he's looking
52:59
at the baby and he's in a he's also in a house that's just been torn asunder by grief, emotions
53:05
everywhere. And he's holding his operational center. One of the things that happens when
53:10
he feels is he feels the openness and the vulnerability of this baby and the grief that's
53:15
eminent emanating through the house. But what also happens is he feels his aches and pains
53:21
in his body more. And this is something, I don't know if this has happened to you before.
53:26
We have different modes. I think, I think women do too, but I'm talking here specifically
53:31
about the ways that guys have different modes sometimes like a work mode where you're operational.
53:36
You know, one show I've been loving right now is land man. I don't know if you've seen
53:39
it. I've seen a lot of clips. Yeah, it does a great job of showing how Billy Bob Thornton
53:45
is interfacing with impossible stuff at work and then trying to figure out how to negotiate
53:49
that in a domestic situation and the timing is always terrible. But these different modes
53:54
that we're in often, it's very hard to switch lanes and not have some kind of clearing mechanism
54:00
or something. And one of the things I've noticed is like if I'm in go mode and I'm really thinking
54:06
or focused or, you know, that could, some of this was also from, from sports from working
54:11
out from, you know, I did a lot of different sports when you're in a mode where you're
54:15
working or you're hard or you're thinking hard or you're exercising hard or you're putting
54:19
out really hard. You don't feel as much pain, whether that's the adrenaline or it's other
54:24
things. But when there's this softening and you sink and settle back out of that mode
54:29
into more feeling, you feel more one of the other refrains from the books. And Evan says
54:34
this to Joey. He says, if you feel more, the catch is you have to feel more. You don't
54:40
get to just feel more and feel like, Oh, I want to just feel love and more happiness.
54:44
It's like that's a valve that opens and you don't get to put a bunch of filters on it.
54:48
Yeah. And so when he holds that baby in a way, it's a moment of him breaking through
54:53
into what is more human. And so he literally feels the different pain and aches and injuries
54:58
in his own body at the same time as the baby's crying. And he looks at the baby and there's
55:03
this weird moment of total empathy. Empathy is not doesn't come quickly to him, but he
55:09
looks at the baby. And if you look at a baby and, you know, babies can be annoying. Babies
55:13
are behind you on the plane, baby screaming in a hospital, someone has a baby in a movie,
55:18
right? You get inured to it and it's a sound of aggravation. And he looks at this baby
55:22
and the baby is just screaming and upset. And if you look at a baby when they're crying,
55:27
they don't know it's like the end of the whole world has just happened because they're colder
55:31
need to be changed. Like the sort of discomfort and desperation and anguish that they're feeling,
55:37
they're brand new to it. What's it like one of the first times you've ever felt English?
55:41
And he sort of opens that aperture to this to, to human feeling with this and just thinks,
55:46
Oh my God, is this how like, is this how some people feel all the time when they see
55:51
a baby cry? How do they function? I couldn't, he couldn't function that way with the things
55:55
he does.
55:56
Well, to put you in a different place mentally, I can't remember where I heard the anecdote,
56:00
but it was basically where this, you know, this, this guy's in physical pain, but his
56:04
little girl comes up to him and says, Daddy, do your hands hurt? Cause he's, you know, rubbing
56:08
his hands together. And he goes, uh, sweetheart, do you have enough food to eat? She's like,
56:14
yeah, he's like, do you have enough clothes to wear? She's like, yeah, do you have, you
56:18
know, the toys that you want to play with and entertain yourself? And she's like, well,
56:21
yeah, daddy. And he goes, my hands feel fine because it's what he's done with those hands
56:26
that is provided for that girl in a way to where if he is all he is living for, then
56:31
his entire existence is going to be wrapped up in his arthritic hands, right? Or his hands
56:35
that have been worn down from service to some ultimate end that, you know, basically ends
56:40
with himself, right? And so I think there's a little bit of that element in there as well.
56:45
And to wrap up our discussion, our non-spoiler discussion of nemesis, even though I would
56:49
like to ruin it for everybody, just for funsies, um, towards the end, Evan has a thought and
56:55
it's an interesting thought experiment, not just in the context of nemesis, but just in
56:58
our lives as well. It was a dangerous thing to envy the dead. And so if you're walking
57:04
through a dark night of the soul, um, and I've talked to plenty of people and I've had
57:08
my own dark nights of the soul that I've had to slowly trudge through before, you know,
57:13
this is where people get it's a non romantic thing, you know, dead poet society. I don't
57:17
really like how romantic suicide was presented in a book like that. But there is this envy
57:23
in I don't want to feel this way anymore. And there are only a few options to make that
57:28
happen. And one of them is death. And you see someone who is no longer suffering, no
57:32
longer anguish, no longer having to make decisions big or small. They're dead and there is that
57:37
bit of envy if we were all to give our answers after taking a little bit of truth serum.
57:42
So talk about the significance of that thought as it pertains to Evan in that moment where
57:47
we see him in the series. Well, he's coming through, you know, his hardest trial when
57:52
that happens really, and there's a kind of anguish and I don't mean it that he is, and
57:58
I know you're not implying this. I don't mean it that he's suicidal or desire, right?
58:03
But he's looking at somebody who is at rest and wondering what it what would it feel like
58:07
to have his soul at rest and to not have to keep fighting and scrapping the way that
58:13
he does he'll shoulder up under his responsibility every time he will see through every mission.
58:18
He will keep his promises. He will he never breaks a promise. And that's the code that
58:24
he lives by and you can knock him down 16 times. And it just means he's going to get
58:29
up six 16 times. That's all that it means. But he does have this moment of recognizing
58:35
what it might be like to just be able to turn the burden over for God. And I think that's
58:41
what he's reflecting on at the end of this, you know, incredibly intense the trials and
58:46
tribulations of Nemesis. It was certainly very, very poignant. But guys, again, the
58:50
name of the book is Nemesis. It is the 10th novel in the orphan X series. Greg, we always
58:55
appreciate having having you come on. But you know, the drill, there's what have you
58:59
done for me lately? And what you've done for me lately is Nemesis. But now it's what are
59:02
you going to do next? Nobody cares about what you've done in your past, all the stuff and
59:05
all that. It's what do you got coming next? So what are we working on?
59:08
Well, I got a couple of things. One, I'm I'm doing my biggest book tour in America. I've
59:14
done in a lot of years. So check that out. You can find me at my website, Greg Hurwitz.net.
59:20
You know, I got all the socials and whatnot. You can find me pretty easily. But I'm going
59:24
to Texas and Ohio and Florida and all through California and Arizona. Like I'm just I'm
59:32
going. So I'm gone on and off pretty much for a month and a half. It's going to be a really
59:37
big tour for this one, the big number 10. So I'm pretty excited about that. And then, you
59:42
know, I'm working on the next orphan X book. That's one I'm I can't wait for you to read
59:48
in particular, it's going to be right up your alley, I think, Kyle. But you know, some I've
59:53
always got my eye on that. And, you know, gotten a few other plates that I'm spinning
59:58
away at and different stages of development, but always, you know, I don't want to talk
1:00:04
about them too much because if I talk about them more than I need to write them less.
1:00:07
So I got to hold some of the magic back. Well, you don't have to talk about those. But,
1:00:11
you know, it's just me and you now I turn the recording off wink wink. So what's the
1:00:14
next thing that Jordan's going to tackle? We've done Exodus. Now we've done the Gospels
1:00:18
as there is another one of those that y'all talked about that you just want to tell me
1:00:21
just tell me right now. Tell me real quick. Just tell me. I'm sorry. I'm having a problem
1:00:25
with the connection issues. Yeah, I mean, that's going out, man. Yeah, apparently y'all
1:00:29
don't have internet or water in full in California for all I know and for all I've heard. But
1:00:34
Greg, it's so good to talk to you. It's always good to chat with you anything else before
1:00:37
we let you get out of here. That's it. It's great to see you. Great to see you. I hope
1:00:41
I catch you on tour somewhere somewhere else. I'm about to go check the dates again. Guys,
1:00:45
that is in the show notes as well. Greg, we'll talk again soon. Take care. There you go, guys.
1:00:50
I hope you enjoyed Greg's latest appearance on the show. But before you let you go, we
1:00:53
are going to do a quick resilience boost at undaunted life or mission is equipping men
1:00:56
to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual mental and physical resilience. I've
1:01:00
got a couple of links for you. I've got a link to the Amazon page where you can buy
1:01:03
your copy of Nemesis. And I've also got a link to Greg's website where you can check
1:01:06
out everything, including where he's going to be stopping on tour. I'm probably going
1:01:10
to go see him at the one in Dallas. So if you want to come meet up with us there, you can
1:01:13
check that out, but go there, check them out, pick up his books, support guys like Greg.
1:01:19
Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe,
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rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want to come speak live at your event
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or on your podcast, you shoot me an email to info@undonton.life. That's I N F O at undonton.life.
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Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
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As always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for
1:01:44
our content. The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled
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debut album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle
1:01:53
Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical
1:01:59
resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:02:29
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