This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Guys, that is Psalm 77:11-12. That just felt right for the end of the year cuz guys, this is the last podcast of 2025. We've made it all the way to this point. I am so thrilled to bring this content to you guys. But real quickly before we do that, just wanted to again express how thankful we are for all of our monthly donors. Just a reminder of a few months back, some of you may have realized you've had been a monthly donor for a while, but your monthly donation had stopped. It's because when we got cancelled by our old old credit card processor, we had to like, you know, go through this whole big long process. And so the new processor for all those monthly donors that went moved over to our new software, it defaulted to them doing one year's worth of monthly donations. And so, if you would not mind, hop back on board. The link is in the show notes or you can just go to undant.life/donate. /donate undaunted.life/donate. And then also just want to remind you guys that if you want to do a taxdeductible donation, there's a link in the show notes to where you can donate to the Daily Blade. Okay? So that's the content that I do with Joby Martin. And so if you want to support that content because that content is I mean I think we went over 3 million downloads like a month ago. Like it's it's just exploding and we want to get more of that content out to guys all across the globe. And so you can actually help support that. And if you're needing an endofear tax write off, guys, like I think you got another 24 hours if you're listening to this on time. So we would love for you to park your donations there. You can go to new horizonsfoundation.com. new horizonsfoundation.com. In the top right, search for the Daily Blade or you can just go to the link in the show notes. And guys, always as always, if you have not left a fivestar review of this show and shared it with a friend, this is the time to do it. Do it before the end of the year. But this episode, we're going to do a wrap-up of the year that was 2025. And so, we're going to look at news stories in sports, like my personal year. I'll be giving you some predictions about 2026. Some of my predictions from last year actually were fairly prophetic for this year. But let's go ahead and get into my 2025 to knock that out. So many highs in 2025. I can say Church of 1122 men's conference, getting to speak there a couple of times, sharing the stage with Willie Robertson and John Tyson and Brian Laritz and Jeff Foxworthy and Joby Martin, that was great. And then also being there for Saturated, which guys, by the way, I need to look this up real quick. I'm going to do this live. I need to see more of you guys at Saturated. Okay, so Saturated is Let me get you the dates and I'll tell you why. Okay, saturated 2026 is Wednesday, September the 16th through Sunday, September the 20th. So, Wednesday, September the 16th through Sunday, September the 20th. So, I'll be at the San Pablo campus there in Jacksonville, but they have campuses all over Florida and I think a couple in Georgia. But you can't understand what it's like to be at saturated by me describing it to you because on paper it looks like, okay, well, y'all are just doing like worship every night for a few days and they're bringing in some big daddy speakers, which they are, you know, speakers and preachers. But the spirit of God falls on that place and and you know, you know, I don't use language like that very often, but the spirit of God is so like palpable in the air. It's like you can grab two fistfuls of it out of the air and like put it in your pocket and it'll like take up space. You know what I mean? So, need to see you guys is saturated. And I was at beach baptism this year. So, I was personally uh part of baptisms for the first time in my life. And because Joby like hurt his shoulder getting out of bed cuz he's like falling to pieces cuz he's so old. I guess TRT doesn't help with that, does it Joby? but he's like falling out of bed, can't get out of bed. So that day I was doing all the physical baptisms and he was doing all the word talk about it or the words and everything behind it. So I think I helped baptize 150 200 people, maybe more than that. And so that was amazing. Then we had our biggest Dominion launch. You guys have heard about my coaching program Dominion undant.life/dominion. You can go and check that out. We're launching three new teams next week. So for the beginning of 2026, that's our biggest launch we've ever done. It's great. I did two amazing in-person meetups with the Dominion guys from our different teams. And so that was it's always good to see those guys from all over the country that are coming together being equipped to push back darkness. We do one fundraiser every year in Oklahoma City and it's uh called the Blue Glass Whiskey Tasting Experience. That was very successful getting people there drinking some spectacular whiskey and then we did some raffle items and whatnot. Built out a new studio. Right. So this setup that you see right here, you've seen some different iterations of this solo shot. you've seen how things look in the new studio space which is just over here to my left. So, we got a new forging table from SoraX that a private donor uh had sent to us which was just amazing. So thankful for him. And then new lights and new cameras. It's three cameras set up. Now we we put together a budget so we could bring people into the studio. So that all started happening in 2025. Uh we also started doing uh I had several hunts this year I guess you could say. So I did a Orics and Aad hunt with Joby. So, uh, and my buddy Heath. And so, Joby and Heath both got a dad and I got an orex. That was My Chemical Orex, the one that had like a horn that was broken and over its eyes looked kind of like emo bang. So, that's why I called him my chemical orex. I also went on a successful gator hunt that was led by uh, Mr. Florida man himself, Mike Dragage. And my boys actually went on that with me. So, they got to see dad, you know, hook the gator, pull the gator out of the water, you know, get on its back, you know, wrestle it for a little bit, do the whole like bop it on the head and put its, you know, bottom jaw on my thigh thing. I don't know why I did that, but hey, I did it. It looks cool on Instagram. And then killing it with a knife and doing that whole thing. The boys were there for it. It was great experience. I took a trip to Montana, not Utah, to go hang out with the the Mountain Tough guys. That was spectacular. James, my eldest, he started te-ball and basketball. So, it's kind of cool to see him interact in a base or baseball scenario and a basketball scenario to interact with teammates. There was actually some guys on the other team in basketball recently that were like talking trash. So, getting to see how he like responded to trash talk for the first time. I got my left sleeve tattoo done by Dustin Yip in Oklahoma City. Again, guys, look him up. Dustin Yip of Scandas in Oklahoma City. So, I got my Jesus uh here. I've got the um I've got the the crosses and the lamb of God. I've got David holding Goliath severed head. I've got uh Goltha and you know, the dove and it's just great. I'm going to be working on the right arm this next year. And then recently I had probably one of the best days of my entire life. Okay, so this is actually worth me telling you the story. So, um, so Heath, who's again a good buddy, he and I do do a lot of hunting together. He suggested that we go on this hunt in Texas. And he said, "Hey, bring James." And in my head, I'm like, "Bring my 5-year-old to go on a like a big hunt for maybe like an axis deer or an orics or something like that at this big place in Texas." it. But he's like, "Hey, I'm bringing my 5-year-old." And I was like, "Holy crap." Like, that would be awesome. Like, that would be really, really cool. But the week of the trip, we were supposed to leave on Friday morning, right? I was going to be picking him up from school from his Christmas party cuz it was the last day of school, half day before Christmas break. We were going to be driving out to the middle of nowhere, Texas to do this hunt. Well, about 2 days before, James pops a fever. Okay. His brother had just been sick. I think I may have been sick at the beginning and maybe got the the least of it or or the u the easiest rout ride. But James is popping a fever. So, we think he's got the flu. Mom got the flu. And James is throwing up in the middle of the night. I think it was from the medicine, not from the flu, but who knows. And he's crying and I'm thinking he's just crying cuz he's throwing up, you know, little kid throwing up. Throwing up's terrible. I'm pretty sure I cry every time I throw up. It's the worst thing ever. But he's crying and I walk in the room cuz I'd been cleaning up, you know, where he had thrown up in the hallway or whatever. And my wife Kelsey goes, "Did you hear what he just said?" And I'm like, "No, what'd he say?" She said, "Dad's not going to let me go hunting with him now." I was, "Oh my gosh, I was so heartbroken for James because he didn't even care that he was sick. He was sad that he was cuz he was so looking forward to this hunting trip because Kelsey was sending me photos cuz I was at the hunting counter with a Church of 1122 guys and she sends me this picture. James grabbed everything he owned that was camo and just put it in a pile in the middle of his room and he's like, "Dad, I'm packing all my stuff so I don't forget." Like, he's so pumped for this hunt. You know, we got him his first belt so I could hold up his hunting pants, which are too big. Like, you know, all these first, right? And so, I'm like, shoot, we're not going to be able to do this hunt. I'm not going to go down there by myself. We'll just reschedule. But then the rescheduled timing wasn't really looking like it was going to work out. And so, he's sick on a Thursday, but that Friday, he was fine. Like you could tell he didn't feel great, but had a great attitude. Never had a fever on Friday. And then Saturday morning rolls around and he's fine, no fever, doesn't seem to be having any of the other symptoms or whatever. And I'm like, I think we may be able to go on this hunt. Like it's a day late, but I checked with Heath, you know, we checked with the guy and checked with different people and it's like, yeah, if y'all want to come down, you can still come down. And so checked with mama and you know she's an absolute gangster because she was not feeling well because she had kind of gotten the flu. But she was just like no if if James is up to it and if you feel good about it like you go ahead and go. I'll take care of Eli, our youngest and all of that. And so there we go. I'm at jiu-jitsu about to step on the mat when I have that conversation with my wife on the phone. And then so I like go up to my professor. I'm like, "Hey Steve, uh got to go." No, it's not an emergency. So we peel out of there, get home, throw all of his stuff in the truck. I throw all my stuff in the trunk. make sure I got my rifle, we got our camo, we got everything. And then we hit the road. It's a long, it was like a 7, 7 and a half hour long drive down to Texas. And I was just like, I'm going to be the most patient. Uh, I'm just going to make every bit of this trip fun. And so in the truck, we, you know, we listen to music. We listen, you know, he's like, can we listen to the news? That's when I listen to my podcast. He had books he was reading. He had, you know, questions that he would ask me. And, you know, our first stop was Arby's cuz that's something that we share in common. I love going to Arby's when we're on the road. And James like, "Can we go to Arby's?" So, we went to Arby's at like 10:30 in the morning cuz that was like the nearest Arby's. So, we went to Arby's, made a fun uh fun deal out of that. But then we get all the way down to where we're hunting and we get there a couple of hours before the end of light, you know, 2 three hours. So, we get out, you know, we get to ride in the side by side and we get in the blind and I got him a pair of binoculars so he could actually like scope for me and like, you know, he was going to be looking for the animal cuz I wanted him him to find the animal and identify which animal we were going to hunt and we thought we were going to be hunting access, but we we weren't exactly sure. uh you know, just depending on what happened in the terrain we were at. And so that was Saturday, right? We we we saw a bunch of animals, but we didn't get to take a shot. Um and so that night, even something as simple as like he and I have never like slept in the same bed, I guess not since he was like a few weeks old or something, but like you know, he was excited to sleep in the same bed with dad and he just, you know, he just cuddled up to dad all night and you know, cuz it was a unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar room and all that and so he would wake up and be a little bit startled and then he would just reach over and find me there and so it was a really really sweet moment. But then the next day comes, it's Sunday. I guess it would have been Sunday and we go out and we were sitting in a blind for a while. We saw some animals, but no animals that we were wanting to hunt. You know, a lot of white tail and some other things. And then we decide we're going to go walk around and lo and behold, we were not really seeing axis bucks, which is what we were there for, but there was an orics that uh I don't know if it got in a fight or something had happened, but it was hobbling. it was kind of crippled and broken down and the the land owner was aware of it and they're like, you know, if we can find this animal, this animal's going to have a lot of trouble trying to get through the winter even though it was really mild when we were there, but it's going to have a lot of trouble getting through the winter and it doesn't look like it's going to be okay. And so the guy and Heath and his son, you know, we're looking for different things and then we identify where this orex is and then I put James on the hunt, right? It's like, "All right, James, like, let's get out of the blind. like let's get our let's get our uh binoculars and let's go search around. And so James Caesar, right, sees this orcs. It's got a broken uh horn. And so this was, you know, going to be, you know, probably broken in whatever Frecus had, you know, kind of broke its front leg and all or front hoof and whatever. And so he sees her. We're, you know, we're creeping in there and whatever. And so I get set up for the shot. I'm kind of on one knee cuz of the terrain. And I take this shot, hit the orics, right? do a follow-up shot just to make sure. And then the orcs, you know, kind of takes off a little bit, you know, into the the thick brush. And now it's, you know, after we wait a little bit, now it's time for James to track. He had never really done a blood track before, right? And so he goes, he runs down there with his son and he's there and he's like, "We found blood. We found blood. We found blood." And there's just this big pile of blood. I am just like I I feel like the universe had opened up and God is like smiling down on me and be like, "I told you having a son would be awesome." And so we go down there in this big thing of blood and I'm like, "All right, buddy. Let's find the next part of blood. You saw which way she ran, right?" And then we're kind of trailing and I posted the video actually on Instagram. I'm videoing him and you know, he's son and they're, "Okay, here's some blood and here's some blood." It was a ton of blood. We knew the animal wasn't far and then we see her. So, the orcs was dead. Uh, and she, you know, she expired very quickly, which is a great feeling as a hunter. And we get up to her and James and I put our hands on her and it, you know, it's just a cool thing, right, to get to experience that hunt with your son. And then one thing that I make sure to do, especially when I'm hunting with people, is when the animal's on the ground, we stop and before we move the body or before we start, you know, gutting it or quartering it out or whatever, we stop and we give thanks to God for that hunt, for that animal, for provision, for food, for meat, for everything. And I was about to do that, you know, with the guide and Heath and his son and my son. And I just go, "James, do you want to pray?" And he's like, "Yes, I do." And then James, we all we all prayed. He's 5 years old and in his little 5-year-old vernacular and way, he just says this this beautiful prayer, thanking God for this animal and thanking God for the meat. And I think he thanked God for the dog that was with us on the hunt and all that. I think he enjoyed the dog maybe more than the hunt. And then, you know, he got to watch a big tractor, you know, come out and kind of help us get the animal out cuz it was kind of in a, you know, in a tough spot. And he got to watch, you know, us, you know, clean it and all those different things and, uh, skin it. And so it was just an amazing thing. And so, and then we, you know, we made our way all the way home and had some more fun on the way home. But yeah, I know that took a little uh a little bit to kind of get through, but maybe that's an encouragement to you guys out there that, man, your kids are paying attention, your kids are listening, and it doesn't have to be a hunting trip, but if you're a hunter, man, find a way for your kids in an age appropriate way to enjoy the hunt with you, right? Because one of these days, I'm going to get a call from James in the middle of the woods that's going to say, "Hey, I got a deer." And what a cool thing that is. And then, you know, I don't really want to think about the Luke Comb songs, Hunting by Myself, but, you know, eventually we'll get to that day as well. So, those are my highs for 2025. Now, let's get to some lows from this year. So, obviously, I've talked about this a lot, but we lost a lot of very, very important men within Christianom this year. So, my buddy Phil Robertson, uh, the great John MacArthur and the great James Dobson. Um, you know, two guys I didn't have the opportunity to meet, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Um, and then Vodie Bacham, who I was very, very thankful to have on the show a couple of times. But at the same time, even though those feel like lows, they are highs also in a way because all five of those men are surely walking in glory with with their Lord and Savior, right? And experiencing the joy that is heaven. And also it's created an opportunity for people that are still here that leaned on those men for the things that they were wanting to do and the things that uh they were a part of and maybe their evangelism and their theological training and their spiritual development. It created an opportunity for those men to step up. Right? I said it at the men's conference at church 1122. I've said it a lot on this show. A lot of guys were looking around like who's going to replace Phil? Who's going to replace Jac? Who's going to replace Dr. Dobson. Who's going to replace Charlie? Who's going to replace Vodie? And the answer is nobody. There's not a onetoone replacement for those five men. Are you kidding? We get one of those guys, right? We get one of each of those guys. The question is not who's going to replace them. How many of us are going to start taking our roles as heads of household, as shepherds, as men that are equipped to push back darkness seriously for the benefit of everybody involved and all the people that we have influence over. Hey guys, real quick. I know a lot of you train for very specific things. So maybe you've got a mud race coming up, a mountain hunt, a 5K, or maybe you just want to keep up with your kids or you just don't want to let the old man in. But for a lot of you guys, whether you're working out at the Glowbo gym or even in your garage gym, you get there and you just don't know exactly what to do. And so you just kind of settle for the same old workout routine, maybe some bench press, bicep curls, a walk on the treadmill, and you know you're not really getting the most out of your workout plan. And I want you guys to stop wasting time at the gym. No more settling. It's time for you guys to get a guide to help you reach your fitness goals. 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If you have minimal or no gear where you train, that's not a factor. They have minimal gear and body weight programs. And guys, if you're wanting to get into or maintain elite level fitness, they've got you covered with programs for top tier athletes, too. And for a limited time, Mountain Tough is extending undaunted lifers like you an incredible offer. Go to mountaintuff.com. That's mtnuff.com and enter the code kyle when you sign up for a monthly plan to receive your first month free after your 14-day trial. So, that's 6 weeks free to make sure this is for you. I'm sure it will be. That is six weeks free on the best-in-class physical and mental training app in the world. So, stop wasting time. It's time to get real fitness results. Let my friends at Mountain Guide the way. Again, go to mtntuff. That's mountain.com. Promo code Kyle. All right, let's keep this wrap up of 2025 going. Let's look at the world of entertainment from this year. So, let's look at the highest grossing movies of the year worldwide. Number three is Lilo and Stitch. that just went over a billion dollars worldwide. It was one of only three films this year to go over a billion dollar mark. Number two is Zootopia 2. So that was a 1.14 billion globally. And then a movie, I don't know how to pronounce this exactly, but it's Nisa 2. So it's Ne. And then the next word is Z ha. This is a Chinese movie. It was basically uh mainly for a Chinese audience. And so that was 1.9 billion. So that was a clear leader this year. But now let's look at the world of music. The top selling artist of the year, no surprise, Taylor Swift. Top selling album was her new album, The Life of a Showgirl. Don't know why anyone in this audience would listen to that. The top selling or top selling single is a song by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars called Die with a Smile. Haven't heard that either, but there you go. The most streamed artist is Bad Bunny. Just got to tell you, I don't think I heard of this person until this year. I don't know a single human being that listens to Bad Bunny. It almost feels like he's being shoved down our throats on purpose. It's like, hey, he's going to do the Super Bowl, and hey, he's actually really a big deal. But yeah, I won't you won't find me watching that at the Super Bowl halftime. The most streamed album of the year is from Bad Bunny. I can't even pronounce this. It's in Spanish, so I'm not going to try. And the most streamed song is again Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars die with a smile. It passed 1.7 billion streams this year. 1.7 billion streams. Nuts. All right, now let's talk about podcast. The top three podcast shows, so you have to look at a few different rankings to get these. Number three is the Mel Robbins podcast. Don't know who she is, but I'm being told that she's supposed to be the left's version of Joe Rogan, which is just hilarious because Joe Rogan is a person of the left. He's just not a psychopath. Number two is the Daily by the New York Times and the number one podcast, as it's been basically every year, the Joe Rogan Experience. Then we talk about the most streamed or downloaded episode of any podcast from this year. It is from the New Heights podcast with Jason and Travis Kelce. It was the episode where Taylor Swift came on and sat next to Travis Kelce and they did that. So all the views in total came together to be in the I think hundreds of millions or something like that. So that is the number one most downloaded and streamed episode of the year. Now let's get to YouTube. So technically and I don't know when this is going to end but Baby Shark Dance every year is the most popular YouTube video for that year. And that video is like 11 or 12 years old. It currently has 16 billion views total on YouTube. 16 billion. Okay. But if we're looking at just a video that was released in 2025, it actually goes to a music video for the song AP. I don't know what that stands for by Rose or Ros and Bruno Mars. So, it had over two billion views in 2025. That's the fastest K-pop. So, if you're into Korean pop music, there you go. Fastest K-pop video to hit two billion views. Then let's look at some of my favorites from 2025. Okay, so my favorite album released this year. And again, guys, I don't listen to a ton of music. I mainly listen to podcasts, but I do listen to albums here and there. I'll do my honorable mentions, then I'll give you my I'll give you my favorite one. And the honorable mentions are all over the place. So, we got Private Music by the Defton. And dude, the Deon have been doing this for like 30 years, and this may be one of the best albums they've ever released. So, Private Music by Defton. The band Acceptance 20 years ago released one of my favorite albums of all time called Phantoms. They're an alternative rock band, but this year on the 20th anniversary of the album Phantoms, they did a re-recording re-release of the entire album and there's kind of like, you know, different parts to the music, but they have a guest singer uh singing with the main guy that kind of goes all the way through there. So, like one of the guys from Pentatonics is doing a song, there's the guy from Alltime Low, there's uh some solo artists Teddy Swims does one. So, that is a spectacular album. Morgan Wallen released a new album this year and I think uh he he's like, you know, duty bound by God, I guess, to release albums that have 40 or 45 songs plus on them. So, I'm the problem. I thought that was a good album. Allison Krauss and Union Station. If you listen to my show, Deep Cut from the show, you know that Allison Krauss is my favorite female vocalist of all time. They released a new album called Arcadia this year. It's spectacular. The band Holy Name, which has the intro outro music of this podcast for now, they did an EP this year called Three Bar Cross. So that's a reference to Eastern Orthodox and all that. I thought that was great. And then there's a I think he's Scottish, a Scottish kind of country artist named Gareth. He probably has a last name, but he just goes by Gareth. He released an EP called Bluebird. Those were all fantastic, but my favorite album of the year has to go to Sleep Token, even in Arcadia. And so the the thing with the Sleep Token band is they one of my favorite albums of all time is their last album, which is called uh Oh, Take Me Back to Eden. There you go. And so this album is not as good as that. But there's just something special about this band. And people are like, "Wait a minute. Aren't they satanic? Aren't you know they they wear the robes and the all black guys? They're playing an act, right? No one knows their identities, right? That's like the thing like, "Oh, we don't know. They're anonymous or whatever." Eventually, we're going to know their identities. And they do all these things that kind of look like, you know, they're they're doing these, you know, I don't know what you would call it. Like their concerts are just kind of strange and weird, but the music is on just another level. That band is just spectacular. But now, let's get into individual songs for this year. I'll give you my favorite song for this year, but let's do some honorable mentions. Prairie Lament by Ian Munick. So, this is kind of a Wyoming country music artist. Prairie Lament is just a it's like a I don't know 30 or 45 second song that he leads off his new album with, but it's just absolutely gorgeous. So, check that out. Void Awaken, which is one of my favorite uh new Christian metal bands. They have a song called Conqueror that's great. There's a pop punky band called Good Terms. They have this song called Progress. And I mean me and my sons, we wear that song out. It's got like a huge breakdown in it. Like this like baseline is just great. So if you're into that, check that out. Impending Doom, the goats of Christian death metal. They have a song called Christ is King. So if that doesn't get you going, I don't know what to do about your pulse. Sleep Token. Probably the best song from that new album is the song Emergence. And then Gareth, there's a song called Stampede. Very, very catchy song. But my favorite song of the year is Oh Come O Come Emanuel by Skillet. And it's not just because they're my buddies, right? Favorite Christmas Carol. If you listen to the Daily Blade, you heard me kind of do a breakdown of the song. Song like goes back to like the eighth or nth century or whatever, but it's my favorite Christmas carol. And Skillet has taken their sound, they're 30 years in, just like Death Tones. They've taken their sound to this brutal, heavy, awesome level, and I'm very excited for their new new music that they'll probably be releasing in 2026. That's my favorite song of the year. Favorite TV show. I don't really watch a lot of television, so I think the only season of the of any show I watched was season five of The Chosen, which if you're a Chosen fan, I thought season five was the best. The tension that they're doing building into Holy Week and, you know, season 5 wraps with Jesus being arrested in the garden, being betrayed with a kiss by Judas. Dallas and the crew are just on another level with that. They've absolutely killed it. Now, we need to talk about favorite movie, but I got to be honest with you, I don't even know. I mean, I thought about it for a while. I don't even know if I watched a movie that was released in 2025. Like, I thought about it and I I just don't get to watch movies. I' I maybe watch five to 10 movies, but I usually just rewatch movies that I love. I'll watch Tombstone or No Country for Old Men or Hell or High Water or something like that. So, I'm going to give you my favorite movie that I watched this year that wasn't from this year. It's a Guy Richie film that was released in 2019 called The Gentlemen. I cannot believe how entertaining that particular movie was. Okay. It's not a, you know, kid-friendly, family-friendly movie, but Guy Richie's form of humor, again, I don't really like kind of, you know, English humor, those types of things, but I thought that this was the best thing that Guy Richie has ever put out. Like, Snatch is great. There's some other good things, but The Gentleman was spectacular. Now, let's also do a recap from the world of sports. So, in 2025 in Major League Baseball, the Dodgers won their second straight World Series, beating the Toronto Blue Jays in game seven. Game seven of the World Series this year is one of the best games that I've ever seen. It was funny because I told people like in the top of the ninth I took like my Jaco Magnesium and my melatonin to go to sleep and the Dodgers tie it with a home run from a guy that was in the game for defense and then I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this game is going to be out of its mind." And it it absolutely was. It's kind of hard to say that I was rooting for the Dodgers, like rooting for a team that's kind of ruining baseball with a half a billion dollar payroll, but I just can't root for anything from Canada. And so Toronto Blue Jays, glad you lost. Suck it, losers. All right, college football. Ohio State, not a huge fan of Ohio State, but they beat the absolutely worthless Notre Dame Fighting Irishman or whatever they call themselves in the College Football Playoff. Quick note about Notre Dame. So, if you're a Notre Dame fan in this audience, just plug your sensitive little Catholic ears, okay? Y'all are really, really sad you didn't make it in the College Football Playoff this year, right? You know, JMU made it and two lane made it and gosh darn it, y'all were ahead of Miami until that last week. And then the committee pulled the old switcheroo and because of like you know this scenario meeting this scenario we had these two teams that are outside the power conferences that got into the playoff and poor little Notre Dame didn't make it into the playoff. Like it's just I know I almost cried earlier talking about my hunting story with James, but this is where I really get choked up. But I do have some advice for anyone from Notre Dame. Maybe the president or the AD or somebody's listening to this right now because Notre Dame got very offended and they just took their ball and went home. They they were like we're not going to go to a bowl game. and we're not going to participate cuz we should have been in the playoff. Maybe go join a conference and go win it. You can even join the ACC, which is technically not even a football conference, but they do have ACC football. I've heard through the rumor mill. Join the ACC because we know you're you're not going to join the Big 10 because there's teams in there that are actually good and the SEC wouldn't even invite you probably. Go join a conference and win it. then you guarantee your spot in the 12 team playoff, right? But you're you're grandfathered in. You can play PIT and USC every year and those are your only tough games. You're probably going to lose one or both of them and then you beat up on Toledo and, you know, butthole state and then you make it into the playoff. Well, I'm so sorry, Notre Dame. Maybe you should change some things. Maybe if you really mean it and you just want to be able to get into the the playoff for football, which is where you make the majority of your money, go join a conference and then go win it. All right, NHL, Florida Panthers won their second straight title, so I don't even know who they beat, but there you go. They won in the NBA by Oklahoma City Thunder. I say that because I live here. They won their first NBA title. Pretty incredible for Oklahoma and Oklahoma City. They beat the Indiana Pacers in seven games. And in the UFC, this is actually pretty exciting. For the first time in UFC history, every single champion at the end of 2025 was different than the champion at the beginning of 2025. At least on the men's side of things. So at flyweight, it was Alexandre Pantoia and now it's Joshua Van. So that one just happened. You know, it was because of an injury, but there you go. Different champion. At bantamweight, which is 135, it was Morab Devos Philly. He was smashed by Pedrion. smashed by him in the same uh night that Panchosia lost his title. Pedrian had one of the most spectacular performances in a championship fight that I've ever witnessed. Dominated Morab. Absolutely dominated him. And so that was great. Featherweight, it was Ilia Tapora, but he vacated. And then Alexander Vulcganowski actually reunit back after he was knocked out by Ilia and lost his title. At lightweight 155, it was Islam Makashev, but he vacated. And now it's Ilia Taporia, but technically it's not Ilia Taporia because he's going through some crazy like divorce stuff right now. And so he was going to allow for like a temporary championship, but then he just full-on vacated. And so Justin Gachi and Patty Pimpblelet, Patty the Batty are going to be fighting in January to see who's going to be the undisputed lightweight champion of the world. At welterweight, it was Bal Muhammad, the most boring of all fighters maybe on planet Earth. But then he was smashed by Jack Dela Matadilena. But then Jack Delatena was absolutely destroyed by Islam Makashev in Islam's welterweight uh debut. So he went up from 155 and then he won the 170lb belt. And middleweight at the first of the year was Dreas Duplaci and he got absolutely dominated by Hamza Chamay. I'm just going to tell you I was thinking about the other day. I don't know that we're ever going to see Hamsad Jamav lose. I just don't know that we're going to see it. His wrestling is at a level that Olympic level wrestlers have trouble with him. If you're just a jiu-jitsu black belt, he's going to run right through you. If you just wrestle a little bit in college, he's going to run right through you. His level of um and here was the big thing with Hamzot for years. It was questions about his cardio because he's mauling all these people in the first round and if he had to go later in fights, right? He he just didn't look great late in fights, right? Even if it was three rounders, certainly in five round fights. And so he beat uh Camaro Usman uh in a three- round fight, but he lost the third round. And if there were two more rounds in that fight, he maybe loses the decision, but now he's working uh with guys at the training lab. It's that crazy psychopath guy that trains people in his garage. And so his cardio now is going to be on another level. His wrestling might be the best in mixed martial arts right now in terms of MMA wrestling. And his striking's coming along. So I think we're about to see one of the most incredible welterweight runs of all time. And that's just depending upon how long he stays at middleweight because he'll probably eventually go to light heavyweight. So speaking of light heavyweight 205, it was Magamemed Anollay who had beaten Alex Pada, but then Alex Pahada knocked him out in the first round to reclaim his belt. So he's a light heavyweight champion. And then at heavyweight, it was the undisputed Jon Jones chip, but now Jon Jones has retired because he was avoiding fighting Tom Aspenol because, you know, he wanted like $40 million to fight him or 30 million or something like that. and the UFC got it together and then instead of fighting Tom Aspenol, Jon Jones retired and so that made Tom Aspenol the undisputed champion. But then in his first defense against Siriel Gan, it ended with an eye poke and it was questionable whether or not he could continue. But there you go. The heavyweight division is a mess. And here's the thing that you may have noticed with all the names that I just pronounced. There's not a single American champion in the UFC except Kayla Harrison on the women's side. Not a single American champion. Not a single American-b born champion in this country right now. So guys, we've got to get that taken care of. Let's get that fixed up. But let's talk about the biggest sports stories of 2025. Here's my honorable mention. So, Alex Ovetkin, he breaks the all-time goals record. The Eagles stop the Chiefs from a three repeat by beating them in the Super Bowl. That was a super one-sided game. And then the college football playoff expansion. But my winner for the biggest sports story of 2025 is Show Otani and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Show Otani. Again, I know I said this on a previous podcast and this is going to make some other people go crazy because Babe Ruth is still a thing, right? Or you know, we have the history of Babe Ruth, but show Otani is the best baseball player to ever play baseball. Okay, the absolute best baseball player to ever play baseball. So, when you bring in everything, the era he's playing in to be able to be a ace level starter and a perennial MVP from the hitting side of things is something that we've never seen before. And he can steal bases. He's a legitimate fivetool player. Like he can hit for average, he can hit for power, he can run, he can defend, and he can obviously and clearly throw. And seeing what Joy Otani's been able to do and then seeing obviously what the Dodgers have been able to do by spending, you know, a patrillion dollars uh to put together the roster. They are the winner for the sports story of the year. But then I'll go ahead and get into the dumbest sports story of 2025. It's clearly the NIL and the transfer portal in college football or just college sports in general. basketball and everything else is in there because NIL is name, image, and likeness which allows for college athletes to be paid directly through the university through boosters and all these types of things. Okay, if you just had that, I wouldn't like it very much because these kids for the most part were getting their schooling already paid for, but okay, it makes a lot of sense. Go ahead and do that. But then you also have the transfer portal. So you're a, you know, stud quarterback coming out of high school and you go to XYZ University. You're there for a year and then you enter the transfer portal and you see what kind of offers you're going to get and you may get an offer from another school, two, three, $4 million to go be uh be their quarterback, similar system. It's going to be good for you and your style of play. And then you transfer. Okay? So, when you have them together, it's a disaster. If we just had NIL, no transfer portal, it'd be fine. If we just had transfer portal, no NIL, it would be fine. But with them together, it's chaotic. for universities, there's got to be some sort of a guarantee that these people are going to stay, right? I remember my buddy who's a big uh Adam who's a big Baylor fan. He was talking about Baylor basketball and I remember this coach for Miami. They're losing their entire roster from one year to the next. In basketball, you don't have these huge rosters, but you're losing the entire roster from year to year. How do you build a program? Like, how are you able to build legacy? And you know, I know people are a little bit, they don't really care about the coaches cuz they make so much money and these coaches can leave in the middle of the season or, you know, not even coach their bowl games like what we've seen. But I just think it's been an absolute disaster. It's the dumbest sports story in the world. I can't watch a school from one year to the next and even know who the players are. Um, so it makes it kind of hard to get into the games because you're not rooting for that same player for the most part. So, we've got to see some changes there and I think we will. All right. Now, let's talk about some notable deaths from 2025. Obviously, I've talked at Nauseam about Phil Robertson, John MacArthur, James Dobson, Charlie Kirk, and Bodie Bacham, but we'll get into some others here. Val Kilmer uh died at the age of 65. He's the actor that was known for, you know, his portrayal on Top Gun and Tombstone. The great Willie Mays, who I think now would be behind Babe Ruth and Show Otani as one of the greatest B or basketball greatest baseball players of all time. He's certainly on the Mount Rushmore. He died at the age of 93. Bob Uker died at the age of 90. He is a beloved baseball broadcaster and he was called Mr. Baseball. Uh Aussie Osborne, so the legendary heavy metal singer from Black Sabbath, died at the age of 76. Gene Hackman, the actor, died at the age of 95, Academy Award-winning actor. Robert Redford, he's, you know, an iconic American actor and director um and he founded the Sundance Film Festival. He died at 89. Rob Reiner, this is a recent one, died at the age of 78. He's an actor and director. So, all in the family when Harry met Sally, the princess bride, and all that. Uh, and it looks like all the indications are that he and his wife Michelle were murdered. Uh, they were stabbed to death by their own son. Um, and just as a little bit of an aside, the post that President Donald Trump made about Rob Reiner after he was murdered by his son was egregious. Okay, this is coming from a man who supported Donald Trump in the last two elections. Okay, huge fan of his foreign policy. You'll hear me talk more about that here in a second. But the pettiness of that post was embarrassing. Okay, now I'm not going to be like one of these dorks that is comparing what he put out there on True Social to what people were doing after Charlie Kirk was assassinated because Trump was not celebrating that Rob Reiner was murdered. Okay, he talked about how he had Trump derangement syndrome and all these different things, but he even told said rest in peace and how it made him sad and all that. But when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, people were cheering in the streets, right? They they couldn't believe their luck and how happy they were and they expressed it online and to anyone that may listen. Okay. But Rob Reiner, um, a person that I probably would have nothing in the world, specifically politically or cultural, that culturally that I would agree with him on, but we didn't deserve to to see that as Americans. It was petty. It was foolish. It was stupid. It was an unforced error. Completely egregious. Also, we saw Diane Keaton die. She I guess her age is not widely specified, but she died in her late 70s. She's an Oscar-winning actress. And then also Pope Francis, the uh first Latin American pontiff, died at the age of 88. So, he was an influ influential leader in a really really bad way for the Catholic Church. But hey, there you go. It's the Catholic Church. All right. Now, let's get to news that you've perhaps forgotten that actually happened in 2025. So in 2025 because of the news cycle things are going so fast you may have forgotten that there are ongoing peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine things are very volatile there but that is happening. There is a peace deal that was kind of sort of struck between Israel and Hamas. There were the extreme California wildfires this year. There was the botched roll out of the Epstein files. Like I don't know what the deal is with Pam Bondi but I'm just deeply unimpressed with that woman. So botched roll out of that. There was the Louve heist. So, a bunch of guys literally got up on like a cherry picker or whatever and broke through a window and like stole a bunch of like, you know, priceless jewels and whatever. And I still think uh some of them are at large. There was a hurricane that went through and and hit Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Hurricane Melissa. West Huff was on the Joe Rogan Experience. I think that is certainly one of the biggest things that happened this year. There was a Blackhawk helicopter that crashed into a passenger airliner in Washington DC on January the 29th, killing 64 people on the plane and three people in the helicopter. And as I talked about, it was a female pilot. Um, you know, Blackhawk pilots are, you know, they are combat uh pilots, and I don't think women should be in that role. I don't think the crash happened necessarily because she was a woman that, but uh they did determine even here recently that it was the helicopter pilot's fault, which is unfortunate for everybody involved. Robert Morris, the uh derelict, horrible, satanic pastor, former pastor, escaped justice. So, he was convicted of raping a 12-year-old, right? This happened back in the 80s, but he basically got a relative slap on the wrist whenever he should have been held, you know, hung by his genitals, uh, and had those ripped off and then bleeding to death, which is exactly what he deserved for what he did. The continued ICE attacks, so immigrations and customs enforcement, there are a lot of people that self-deported this year. But then there are people that have to be captured and taken out of the country. And every single person that I is capturing and sending out of the country is a criminal. Some of them their only crime is coming to this country illegally, which is still a crime. But some of them did that and committed a bunch of other crimes. So, every time I hear about an illegal immigrant that murders someone or is driving a, you know, big truck and kills a family or is drunk driving and strikes a pedestrian or just steals from somebody or whatever in this country, I think to all those people that want to keep the borders open. But if those people were not here, then none of those crimes would take place. No one would be murdered by an illegal immigrant if the illegal immigrants are not here. But then people are turning their eye towards the people that are arresting these individuals. And isn't it so interesting? Those same individuals would be the ones calling the police if one of those illegal immigrants were breaking into their home or trying to harm them or to steal from their business. So, isn't that so interesting? And then this year, uh, we saw the complete falling off of a cliff of Chip and Joanna Gains. They used to be probably the most famous couple in all of Christianom, but they've gone the way of the woke left. So, that all went down this year. But at least we know. Now, let's talk about the most concerning news story of 2025. When I look back on the year, there's a lot of things to be concerned about, but I'm just going to kind of, you know, put it all into one, you know, thing here. It's all the AI stories that we've seen. So, as I've talked about, I do use AI to help me with research, right? So, I'll put things into Google Gemini or Grock or to ChatgBT, and it just kind of helps get research done a whole lot faster. But we've also seen chat bots. We've seen kids um kill themselves because they enter into like this relationship, this dependent relationship with an AI chatbot of some kind. And we we see just a lot of stories where well, I'll explain it this way cuz John Tyson talked about this in one of his books, but there are these big changes within humanity. So in the 1300s, I'm trying to remember all this from memory, but in the 1300s, the first bank ever was established in Florence. And so in the 1300s, we saw this shift that went from land as wealth to money as wealth. Okay? Then fast forward to the 1700s, we have the invention of the first steam engine. Okay? So we go from human bodies doing work to machines doing work. And then in the 1900s there was some uh there's some you know paper that was published. It's basically ushering in the information age. So in the 1900s we had the shift from wisdom is knowledge to information is knowledge. Okay cuz used to there was something things that you could learn but you needed wisdom to discern what to do with that information. But we moved from just like no information in and of itself is knowledge. And that's the last thing that Tyson talks about in his book. But now I want to add a fourth thing. you know, the AI revolution with potential quantum computing and all those different things. It's going from humans thinking and creating to AI thinking and creating. Okay, this has some dire ramifications and consequences for humanity at large because you have people that can't even write an email now because chat GBT can do it for them. So, they will just prompt, hey, I'm sending an email to this group and blah blah. Sometimes they spend more time on the prompt than it would have taken to actually just write the email themselves, but they don't want to think through writing the email. So, they have the AI think and create for it. We saw the rise of AI music this year. And, you know, some of the AI music is spectacular, but it's created by robots which are just, you know, stealing from the rest of the music from humanity and making its own sounds via the prompts that people give it. We saw AI stuff go to the top charts on Spotify and Billboard and different things like that and some different categories. I think that that's concerning because humans create and we create music to worship God, right? That's what we do and yet we're just kind of letting AI do it. So, how much longer is that going to be a thing? Now, concerts are a big deal, and I don't know how AI is going to pull off concerts, but if you can pull off AI music, then why couldn't you do like some sort of hologram show and take that on tour? You know, we have people that already go to see DJs perform live, but a DJ is just basically, you know, hitting a track and switching, you know, the things on their switcher and all that. And, you know, thousands of people will go and see that. So, I don't think we're we're that far away from that. But I think the issues are going to be bad for humanity because we're going to turn our brains off. And we see this with research into, you know, Parkinson's or any type of dilitterious mental diseases as people age. If you turn your brain off, you waste away. Okay? So, all you men out there that are maybe in your 50s or 60s or even your 70s listening to this and you don't read because ah, I don't need to read. What are you doing with your brain? Are you building things? Are you creating things? Or are you just sitting there watching television? Right? Every now and then you'll you'll go outside to go check the mail or you know do do something but your brain's not getting any exercise especially if you're not exercising your body in general but your brain's getting no connection to exercise. You are wasting away mentally and AI is going to do this for us because hey why would you need to read a book if you can just ask AI to give you like the full rundown of the book? You have kids that are graduating from college having never written a paper themselves. They just go from this AI to that AI to that AI to try to trick their professors into thinking, "No, I actually wrote this. I actually came up with these thoughts." But the problem is is it's similar to what, you know, we see with the DEI stuff. You know, you you talk about these students who don't meet the minimum requirements to go into like a a four-year Ivy League school, but because of their immutable characteristics, like maybe their race or their their chosen gender or whatever, they get into these schools. The nefarious thing about that is not only do you kind of create this a scant look at these students cuz it's like, hey, should they even really be here? even though even if they had earned it, but most of the time we don't really hear about this. But those kids don't graduate from those schools because they don't have the intellectual ability to be able to stand up to the rigor of the program, right? But then you had some of these Ivy League schools are like, "Oh crap, we're getting these kids in, but we can't get them graduated." So they just started graduating these kids. So, they got the credential with the fancy name across the top, but now they're not able to do any of the jobs that somebody with that credential should be able to do. Now, let's extrapolate that out to AI. We have tons of kids that are not learning anything, even if they're in STEM, right? They're having AI do their computations for them. Some of these schools are still allowing kids to do open book or open laptop tests where they're just plugging everything into AI and they're not even really hiding it. But in the university, why would they want that to stop? Because they're still going to get paid, right? They have guaranteed loans from the federal government. They're still going to get paid. And also, they're going to continue to hike up their fees and their tuition. And so, I know a lot of people have told me, "Hey, you can't stop the AI revolution. Don't be one of those old fuddy duddies, you know, basically shaking your cane at the sky saying, "Well, I ought to." And if we could just go back to the way things were. I don't see AI being a net positive for humanity in the long run. Yeah, it's awesome. Like today, I mentioned that Phantoms album, uh, the Phantom's 20-y year anniversary album. Well, a lot of those names I didn't recognize. So, as opposed to googling those names one by one and trying to see what band all these people were in that were doing the guest vocals, I just asked chat GBT and in 2 seconds I had the full list of everybody that was on there, right? There's some great things on there. There are people that have some mental issues that chat is able to help them with or these different AIs are able to help them with, but I think the level of dependence that human beings and humanity overall is going to have on AI is not going to be good for humanity. All right, guys. Now, let's talk about the most insane news story of 2025. This is according to me. And yes, there's there's a lot of crazy news stories, but this one is maybe the one that has along with AI some pretty bad consequences for the future, but it was a new poll that came out and I forgot who did the poll. I meant to look it up, but it was looking at priorities among Gen Z men and Gen Z women. Okay? And it ranked them. I think there were like uh 12 different things that were ranked. And it was things like having a highpaying job, having kids, starting a family, being financially independent, being able to do a lot of those different things. And so when you looked at Gen Z men, the number one priority for them was to have a family, to start a to get married, I think, was number one, and to have kids was number two. Those were the bottom two for Gen Z women. And as we've seen, we've never seen a more conservative cohort since we've been studying than Gen Z American men. They're more conservative politically and they're more religious. And simultaneously, we have never had a less religious, more left-leaning cohort than current Gen Z females in America. This is a crisis. This is a crisis. So part of the reason why there's such a problem in China with uh their their population is they did the one child policy and there's a cultural preference for men. And so there are millions, tens of millions of Chinese men who will not get married because there aren't women to marry because of the one child policy and because people were aborting their female children to be honest. Okay. So you have all these men that their entire life is just vapid. they have no one to provide for. Cuz a lot of you have seen this. A lot of you, your ability to produce and to make money went up when you got married, right? And then when you had kids, it probably went up again for a lot of you guys listening to this. But we have so many people that aren't doing this. And so now you have young American men that just want to go to church, serve God, love a woman as Christ loved the church, and raise children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. and they're looking around and all that's available are these feminist left-wing I don't need no man females out there that are trying to get an extra pants suit, take their uh vacation to Miami and buy that extra handbag as they, you know, try to work their way up the corporate ladder and then those gals get into their late 30s or 40s or something like that and then they realize, oh, maybe this isn't all that is cracked up to be. They still have that desire inside of them to produce children. Maybe they find a man and now they can't have children because bodily speaking they're they're outside of that window. Then you turn to IBF and you turn all these different things. And I've already elucidated my opinions on and all those things and and the moral issues with all that. But this is a looming crisis and I don't quite know how it's fixed on a cultural level because the modern day church and again I'm still thinking through this so I'm kind of verbally processing with you guys. The modern day church is built for women. It's built with women in mind. It caters to women. That's why it's mainly women at these churches. Right now, that is shifting considerably, but there's a lot of women, a lot of mothers that are going to these churches by themselves. But when you look at the music, it's catered to women. You know, it's not sung in a congregational style where there's multiple parts where you can hear the male voices participating. The band's so freaking loud that you can't hear anybody singing other than the people on stage. And there's typically like 17 people on stage with microphones and only three of them are turned on. What are they singing a 17-p part harmony? What in the world's going on? So you have these women, it's more the songs are emotive and it's it's talking about their emotions and and and with the things that they're going to do and how how God is just so into them and all that. It's super feminine. And then a lot of pastors, they always talk about grace, right? They don't really talk about truth. That's kind of sticky and pnicity, right? They they they talk about the lamb of God, right? uh they don't really like talking about the line of Judah, right? And so church is made for women and yet women are rejecting it wholesale. So what what changes here, right? The church answers, "Oh, the gospel." Okay. Well, how is that going to be applied culturally, right? Because God does the work of saving, right? The deeper I study the New Testament, that is just kind of what what it says that God does the work of saving. but the work of disciplehip over the long haul. I don't think the modern day church, certainly not the church in the west, is ready for that. So, you have these men that are so fervently wanting again to to love a woman and to raise a family and then there's no one there. I'm I'm coaching a kid right now that I'm just like beating my head against the wall because, you know, he's he owns a business and he's got his crap together and he's he doesn't have all this sexual baggage and he doesn't smoke pot and he doesn't drink and he doesn't play video games all day. He doesn't watch porn and jerk off like and he can't find a gal. He can't find one because all his stupid friends, they're just going to the apps and they're just hooking up with chicks and maybe they're going to hook up with that one chick where they can kind of tolerate them long enough to where they'll eventually get engaged and then get married, right? Which tell me about a love story that's better than that, right? But then you get into these situations where, you know, what do you tell someone like that? Because they're looking around and they're looking in the right places. They're not going to clubs. They're not going to the beach looking at all the scandaly clad gals in their thong bathing suits and all that. They're going to church. And that's not where the young women are cuz they've bought the poison pill of feminism that they can be super mom maybe eventually. They can be super wife maybe eventually. But right now, they're just going to try to crush it. They're going to try to climb the ladder. They're going to try to build that business. And the reality is is you can't. You flat out can't. I don't care about these influencers on Instagram trying to convince you that you can. You can't be everything. There are roles that God has set forth for humanity that are for our benefit and our flourishing. And when we try to create things outside of that plan from God, we are setting ourselves up and cultural large culture at large for a massive disappointment. So that's why I think that's the most exciting news story of 2025. what we see in the polling with Gen Z men and Gen Z women. But now, let's talk about the most ignored news story of 2025, and it's changed in the second half of this year, but it's still relatively ignored, and that's the slaughter of Christians around the world by Muslims. I've talked about that a lot on this show. For any of you that have been listening to me for several years, how often do I talk about this? How often do you hear stories about Boka Haram or ISIS or some al-Qaeda affiliated group killing and slaughtering and raping Christians in uh Nigeria or Nishair or in uh Sudan or in I mean just pick a place. Okay. But there was a little bit of a shift kind of started with Bill Maher. Donald Trump got on there and Donald Trump straight up told looking at the country of Nigeria, "Hey, if y'all don't stop, if y'all don't stop this whole killing of Christians in your country, because it's tens of thousands of Christians have been murdered in Nigeria just this year. If you don't stop it, we're going to stop sending aid to your country, and we're also going to get kinetic. We're going to come in guns blazing." And then this is a brand new news story. I just put this into my notes. This is from the Wall Street Journ journal on Christmas Day. So, let me read this here. The United States launched strikes on Islamic State targets in Nigeria to protect the country's Christian population from the terrorist group, President Trump said Thursday, Christmas Day. The United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS terrorist scum in northwest Nigeria, Trump said in a post on True Social. I have previously warned these terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight there was. The strike comes after Trump said last month that he had instructed the Pentagon to prepare for possible military action in Nigeria. the United States could go uh in guns ablazing with the goal of wiping out Islamist militants in the country, he said. Trump also threatened to halt all aid and assistance to the country if it quote continues to allow the killing of Christians unquote. A Defense Department official said Nigeria's government approved the Christmas Day strikes and works with the US to carry them out. Trump's post offered no further details about the action, including how many people were killed. The president was clear last month, "The killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria and elsewhere must end." Defense Secretary or Secretary of War Pete Hexath posted on X after Trump's announcement. US African Command, which conducted the strike, said it was directed at militants in known ISIS camps in Nigeria and used intelligence from the US and Nigerian forces. So, this is obviously great news. I am all for this. kill as many of them as you can and let God sort them out as far as I'm concerned. But this is real leadership from Donald Trump. The petty, stupid crap that he says, some of the weird things he's doing uh influencing the economy, there's there's a lot of things, frankly, in this first year of the Trump administration that there's not not to like. But overall, there's a lot to like. And almost all that comes down to how he's protecting the homeland via the borders and also his foreign policy. So, it's like, look, you're not just going to get to slaughter Christians, okay? You also have to look at this from a midterm perspective. What benefit is there to killing ISIS terrorists in Nigeria? There really isn't one. You could be super MAGA right-wing guy, you know, pie in the sky. You think everything's going to work out for the Republican party. The the electorate here in this country doesn't really care that much about this. The people that care about it, we're going to vote for all the Republican candidates anyway, right? If we're being honest. But it is the most ignored news story ignored in this way because again if a black man that's armed and is trying to kill a police officer ends up dying in the process because the police officers actually are able to end the threat and in that person. Well then we're going to destroy the country. We're going to set cars on fire. We're going to destroy and loot businesses because nothing says justice like give me a pair of Jay's, right? But we we will destroy the entire planet. But an entire Christian village in Nigeria can get wiped out by Muslims that are doing exactly what the prophet Muhammad would want them to be doing in modernity. We don't hear boo. Where's Black Lives Matter? Cuz according to their skin color, they're those are black people that are being slaughtered in Africa because they claim Christ as Lord and Savior, right? Where's Black Lives Matter? Where's all the woke left people talking about the things? Let's talk about green people that are that are wanting to be, you know, everything has to be, you know, we we got to get rid of fossil fuels and, you know, we got to take, you know, boats everywhere that's just, you know, using the wind sailboats or whatever. Let's talk about those people. Well, in countries where they're worried about these militant Muslim groups, these aren't countries that are simultaneously worried about putting up wind turbines everywhere and setting up entire fields full of like sun panels, right? Cuz they're worried about getting their heads chopped off. Where are all the green people? Where's Greenpeace? Where are all those people? Where are all the cries from people that always claim that they're fighting for those that are unjustly targeted? Where are those people when it's Christians being slaughtered in Africa? They're nowhere because it actually doesn't comport with their worldview because according to them, Muslims are are actually people that are are higher on the hierarchy of people that are being harmed by the patriarchal white Christian society. So even when it's black Africans being killed h well they're Christians so you know I don't think we should say anything certainly don't hear anything from Bernie Sanders from AOC from Pete Buddhajes from any of these future leaders of the Democratic party we don't hear anything from them whatsoever and that is incredibly incredibly telling but now let's talk about as we wrap up or wind to a close here let's talk about the biggest news person biggest news story and the most talked about news story of the year and the most talked about news story of the year and the biggest news story is obviously the assassination of Charlie Kirk. So I thought it was going to be Donald Trump getting into office in his first year in office. I didn't think there was anything that would supersede that. But when Charlie Kirk was killed in early September of this year by an assassin, it created its own gravitational pull. Obviously Joby and I recorded a reaction episode. It was one of our top three most downloaded and streamed episodes this year. We wanted to help people kind of think through what was going on. Then I did my follow-up episode where I went into a long explanation in detail about what I thought that it meant. But when he was assassinated, it revealed a lot of things about the body politic in America, about the left in America, and about the right in America. Because when someone on the left is killed, or someone that the left likes, again, they they destroy, they loot, they burn, they kill. When someone on the right is killed, what we see Christians and conservatives do is candle light vigils in prayer. You have an entire arena filled with tens of thousands of people that are raising their hands to the skies praising God for how good he is when Charlie Kirk's body is still not even cold yet. And then we see people on the left, these just demonic just pieces of human debris that were celebrating this person's death. And I elucidate a lot of those people. And those people, a lot of them lost their jobs and lost their social standing and couldn't have happened to better people. I'll tell you that much. But it's certainly the most talked about thing because whether you were on the left or the right, you had something to say about the Charlie Kirk assassination. It's continued because of the foolishness that we've seen from Candace Owens. And again, if you're someone in my audience that is a big Candace Owens person, I'm just curious what you need to see before you realize she's completely full of bull crap. I I just don't know what else you need to see. Because you keep using innuendo and you keep saying things and you keep saying things like, "Well, I don't know, but I know if you know what I'm saying, you know, and then you think, yeah, that's good enough for me. I trust Candace. I I'm not going to trust my lying eyes and ears that see no evidence and hear no evidence, but I like Candace, so I'm going to trust her." Where you guys at? you you keep not coming forward with the receipts and you just keep telling us you've gotten special revelation in your dreams and you don't know but you know and yet you can't prove anything. As I've said before, there are things that stink about the Charlie Kirk assassination. But the God's honest truth and the most likely thing according to AAM's razor is that a mentally disturbed satanically driven individual got up on a roof, pointed a rifle at his probably his head, missed, hit him in the neck, and then he died. bled out, basically died immediately. Okay, that's the most likely scenario, but because of the ubiquity of the coverage, because of how big of a person Charlie Kirk was, and because of the reaction of both sides, it was the most talked about news story of the year and the biggest news story of the year. But let's wrap up today where I talk about, well, actually, now we got to do my predictions as well. Biggest news person of the year, 2025. No surprise, it's Donald Trump. He shut down the border on day one. His tariff policy has been kind of random. I don't know that it's been successful. He's been the the president of peace. all the peace deals and negotiations he's done around the globe. He is clearly the biggest news person of the year and he clearly deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. But let's talk about these are going to be my predictions, the likely big news stories that you should expect in 2026. So again, I kind of focus on the negative because you know I'm here to equip men to push back darkness. So there's not going to be a whole lot of light here. But Muslims will continue to terrorize the world. They will continue to kill Christians everywhere where they're allowed to do so. They will continue to terrorize the local populuses. They will continue to take advantage of the cultural laress and the allowance and tolerance from uh European countries, from Canada, from America to allow them to come into the country to not assimilate to the values of that country, to the language of that country and just to kind of spread their demonic Muslim tendrils all over the place. That will continue to happen. We will likely see a large-scale terrorist attack take place. It may take place here in this country. If you listen to different people in the intelligence agencies, they think that there is going to be a large kind of, you know, uh, you know, like what Hamas did in Israel on October 7th style attack that's going to take place all over the West. So hopefully we don't see that. I think we're going to see Republicans lose the House in the midterm elections, but narrowly retain the midterm elections, which I'll go ahead and give you a prediction for 2027. Trump will be impeached. He'll probably like trip going up the stairs accidentally on Air Force One and then, you know, he'll be impeached for that. So that'll be coming in 2027. But since the Senate will be retained by Republicans, he will remain in office. But essentially, the last two years of his term, he's not going to be able to get anything done. So Republicans, you really got to get your crap together. Stop with the infighting. You got a year to get crap done. I think the Democratic field for 2028 will narrow. And this is what I mean. We're going to see more people announce Democrats announce that they are running for president for 2028. But throughout 2026, we're going to see the list of people that have a realistic option, a realistic ability to win the Democratic nomination and to potentially win the general. That's going to get much more narrow in the next year. I think the economy, and again, I'm not a professional economist, I think it'll stay in this weird kind of state of flux. We don't really know what's going to happen with uh the interest rates. We don't really know what's going to happen with the stocks. You know, is there an AI bubble that we're in the middle of right now? I don't know that anything's going to get sorted out next year. I think we're going to stay in a state of flux until after the midterms. I think ICE agents will be killed by leftists, and I hate saying that, but when you have ICE agents literally being targeted for destruction, when you have National Guard troops that are literally being targeted for destruction, and when you have the left-wing media and leftwing politicians continuing to drum up this nonsense about what's happening to illegal immigrants in this country, a lot of it, that's not true. The stuff that they're saying, I think the ICE agents will be targeted and potentially killed this year. I think Pope Leo is going to continue his leftward march. I think people were really holding out hope that he was going to be different from Francis, but he's just kind of right in line with Pope Francis. And so I think that's going to continue to happen. I think the college football playoff entry requirements will change. I know that's kind of like a hard left turn and the stuff we're talking about, but after this year with all the complaining with Notre Dame and, you know, good arguments for BYU or Texas or Vanderbilt to be in the playoff and seeing how badly JMU and Tain got destroyed, I think we're gonna see some changes. And I saw one guy's argument. He's like, "Look, this is before JMU and Tulain got smashed." He said, "Even if they keep those games close and even if you know the craziest thing happens and those teams win, they still shouldn't be in the playoff." And you would wonder, well, why is that? It's because they don't have the strength of schedule and they don't have the credentials from the rest of the year that says yes, they should be in that playoff, right? Because, you know, I just mentioned Notre Dame, BYU, Vanderbilt, and Texas. I think all those teams had better uh resumes to be in certainly than two lane and B and JMU and I can't remember if it was two-lane or BMU or uh JMU but they played like one team that was in like the top 50 strength of schedulewise and they lost to that team. That was their one loss for the year and so they have no good wins and then they have one bad loss to the only good team they played. So I think we're going to see some shakeup in that. But this is what I will say before we get out of here today because I know that can seem kind of dow and down and some of the stuff that we cover certainly is because everybody else is covering flowers and rainbows apparently. One thing that we know for sure is that whether my predictions come true for 2026 or not or on into 2027 there and beyond nothing surprises God. God's not going to be shocked by anything. We live in a time and we live where there is time that is going in a particular direction. Right? So, we are not in the future because we are bound by time. So, we can't even see the future. God is already in the future. God's already there. God knows what's going to happen. Okay? He's working things together for the good of those that love him. Right? So whether you're personally going through a dark night of the soul, whether you're worried about what's going on the news cycle, whether you're staying up wondering if the Republicans are going to be able to keep the house or you're hoping that the Democrats take over the house or something like that, just know that God is in control. God is not surprised by anything. And go out and touch grass. That's going to be something I'm going to say more and more because people are so concerned about something happening in Washington DC, they have no idea what's going on in their own community. They can't name their mayor. They can't name their local sheriff. They don't go to church anywhere. They don't know their HOA president. They don't know their neighbors names. They don't know how to take care of the business on their street. And yet, they're worried about the business of the country or the world. Guys, go out and touch grass. Commune with God and his creation. Spend time in his word. If you want God to speak to you, pray to him. And if you want him to speak to you audibly, as a lot of people have said, open up the Bible and say it out loud. And I'll give you one last thing that I've started telling some guys recently that have struggled with prayer. Some of you guys are natural prayers. You got a prayer closet at home. Like you're big prayer guys. That's not the majority of guys. I would say 95% of guys probably aren't that way. If you struggle with prayer, this is what I want you to do. Okay? Go on your shelf, grab your Bible. Okay? And if you just kind of start fanning through the first part of your Bible, right, the odds are you're going to land in a psalm because the psalms are just like dominant in this book. And so you just start flipping through and you're going to land on a psalm. Okay? So I just open this up and it's at Psalm almost dropped it. Psalm 107. Okay? And I want you to read that psalm out loud and let that be your prayer. Now, it could be a prayer or a psalm of lament. It could be a psalm of praise. And maybe you're in the opposite state of mind, right? But you just flip through your Bible until you get to the Psalms and you stop on a random one and you make that your prayer for the day. Allow that to be your prayer for you, for your family. If you're in a time of plenty and it's a psalm of lament, there will be a day where you will be in a lament stage. Pray that prayer out loud. If you're in the dark night of the soul, if you're in the valley of the shadow of death and it's a praise prayer, allow that to surge you into the future. Okay? And so guys, again, 2025 had its ups and downs. 2026 will be the same. Every second that goes by, we will be that much further and closer to Christ coming back and claiming his bride into a new heavens and a new earth. All you are to do is to submit to the Lord, repent of your sin, and follow along on his journey. All right, guys. That'll do it for today. Before you go, we will do a quick resilience boost at Adopted Life. Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. I've got some links today. I've got a link to where you can donate to the Daily Blade. Again, if you want a taxdeductible donation, go to new horizons foundation.com. Go to the projects tab, search for the Dailyblade, new horizons, new horizons foundation.com. or you can just check out the link here in the show notes and also there's a link where you can donate directly to life una.lifedonate guys. Appreciate you. We'll see you next year. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five-star review. If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info@undanton.life. That's info@unton.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undauntton.life. And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is their song Perpetual, which is off their self-titled debut album on Faceown Records. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness. Keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.