Youngdad Roundtable 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
And we're live, gentlemen. Well, we're back.
We're back again. Super excited to be with you.
Welcome into the second ever Young Dad round table.
I'm joined by through returning fellow fathers, brothers Casey,
Chris and Mike. So super excited to have you.
If you're unfamiliar with what this live show is, this live
show is where I get a bunch of guys together.

(00:32):
We talk about all the things, good, bad, ugly, beautiful,
happy, sad, mad, angry, all the in between and we have fun doing
it. We share opinions, maybe we
debate, maybe we disagree, maybewe agree on everything.
Who knows. We don't know how the night's
going to go and how things are going to go.
The only caveat is we get off when babies cry or when our
significant others pull us away.Until one of those two things

(00:52):
happen. Then we will stay on and we will
stay with you. So with that, I'm going to open
the show. So I know I told you guys.
So we have two opening stories tonight and I think 1 takes
precedence over the other and I have quite a bit that I want to
get into with this first one. So if you haven't checked social
media today, if you've been unaware of what happened, a

(01:12):
tragedy happened in Utah today at Utah Valley University.
Charlie Kirk was doing one of his open forum debates on a
college campus when he was beingasked about trans gun violence
and gun violence in general and then was shot in the neck.
He passed away a few hours later.
He leaves behind a wife and a three-year old and a one year
old. And so wanted to 1st, of course,

(01:34):
talk about this because there's a lot of there's a lot of social
media takes on this. There's people who are cheering.
I personally disagree with that.There's a lot of people who are
on the left that are saying, Oh yeah, I disagreed with his
politics. But you don't, you don't shoot
somebody because you disagree with them or you have debate
with them or you can't come to adisagreement kind of thing like
it's not right. The political violence in our

(01:55):
country has escalated to a pointthat, well, just influencers are
now getting shot at a college campus in Utah.
So it's, it's terrible what happened and it's, it's sad.
There's, there's, there's two sides of this, right?
There's, there's a side, and I'mjust giving this as preface and
I'll kick to you guys. But there's the one side that

(02:16):
says this is, this was politically charged left versus
right. And there's also the side that
it's good versus evil. Because Charlie Kirk was a very
devout, very open Christian. He talked about God.
He always used the Bible in his rebuttals, always used the Bible
in his rebuttals. And he was a man of God.
He lived for God, he lived for Jesus.
And he talked about that openly and without hesitation 100% of

(02:39):
the time. And so, yeah, I would love to
get your guys's thoughts on thistragedy where where you guys
said. And then I will share something
that I ended up writing after after I get hear from you guys.
OK, hello. Yeah, Chris, could you hear him
just now? A saga's breaking up some, but I
can hear him. Can you hear me good?
I can hear. I can hear you, Chris.
I can hear you, I. Think it's just Jay's.

(03:00):
Yeah. No, Jack is to hear him.
I couldn't make it out but. I I was saying I'm going to kick
to you guys to share your thoughts on on this and then
after that. OK, I could a.
Bit of a poem that I'm going to I'm going to share.
OK, I get. Can I go first then, please?
OK, I think, OK, so I don't knowa whole lot about the guy Kirk,
but I've watched a couple of hisvideos.

(03:21):
So when somebody first said it, first of all, I'm in part of
this other group chat with some men.
And then somebody said, I'll say, well, who was that?
I don't even know who that is. So I had to go look it up and
then when I saw, I said, Oh, I've seen this guy before.
I just didn't know his name. And then I saw the video where
he got like hit in the neck, shot in the neck.
So when he was leaning to the side, I just like, I don't know
if he made it, but I don't, I don't really know.
I'm not no doctor. So then I seen him leaning.

(03:42):
I was like, all right, So then Ichecked out his content, but
I've seen his stuff. It's I mean, it's really sad.
I wouldn't say I agree or disagree.
So a lot of stuff that he said makes a lot of sense.
He's bringing in biblical stuff and Bible stuff.
I do think at times he can be a little bit too radical.
And that's the thing I've alwayskind of saw was like some
points, you know, you kind of kind of under down quite a bit

(04:03):
there. But I think overall it seemed
like most of his messages, I mean, there weren't anything out
of the ordinary or anything likethat.
It's like biblical base. That's the way I saw it.
So that's my my 2 cent. I don't have a whole lot.
OK, So anybody else could go? So just selling myself out.
I was a TPUSA supporter. I, you know, worked with them

(04:23):
during previous elections to tryto help get out the vote efforts
and things like that. In a minor way, I've done more
with other political entities, but you know, Charlie was a good
man. He's pretty mainstream for our
side of the aisle, my side of the aisle.
When it comes to what he espoused from the microphones to

(04:44):
college campuses, obviously it'snot going to be well received
there. So I give him a lot of credit
for facing down what was obviously going to be hostile.
But the crowds that he had in the beginning of his Prove Me
Wrong outreach that he was doing, we're all hostile.
And then they moved to be in halfway hostile.
And then it moved to be in 80% people that just came to see him

(05:07):
and 20% of the hostile typical, you know, higher Ed folks that
would be his opposition. And he was always very
magnanimous with people about how he communicated with them
with respect. And I think what we're
witnessing, for better or worse is the end of debate in the

(05:27):
public other than online, which is of course, and you know,
pretty much the worst place possible to try to have debates
as we're doing right now. Possibly.
But you know, with a in a forum like this, there's actually a
social consequence. If I disagree with you, I can
see what your guys impression was of what I said and all those
things. But in a Twitter or X stat,

(05:50):
that's not possible. And I just think we we there
have been probably in the last six months just an absolute
array of political violence. And we must face facts that
we're probably in a climate where if the pendulum swinging
back the other way against this kind of violence.
Those are the types of things that happened pre World War Two,

(06:12):
I'm not going to lie, because there was severity of aim.
Similarly in the French Revolution, just the clap back
was in the other direction. So when you know, but it really
only takes a radical 1 to 2% to move, you know, the pendulum or
the reaction to the violence in a in a really terrible
direction. And I said this when Trump was

(06:33):
elected, especially after he wasan attempt was made on his life
that the left needs to be extremely careful about their
response to this. Because if violence when they
get backed into a corner, just like a Wildcat, the first move
that they that they seem to pullfrom is violence.
And I don't think that that I'm out-of-the-box saying that based

(06:54):
on what we've seen over the lastsix months.
And I do think they should be exceedingly careful because I
don't want to see government tyranny and overreach based on
political violence. I don't want to see, you know,
certain segments of the population being overly
targeted. But to be frank, as a card
carrying member of conservatism and faith-based, you know, in my

(07:16):
political views, I have been thetarget also of political,
political, you know, political at least minor political
persecution during the time of COVID and beyond where churches
were not allowed to be open. And I consider that to be about
as radical as it gets. I do not want to see the
pendulum swing in a direction where that's used against the

(07:39):
people that I view as my political rivals.
You know, I was a card carrying liberal up until about 10 years
ago and the radicalism is just something I cannot get with.
And you know, since I became a believer 19 years ago, this that
is what drives me politically first and foremost is I just
believe in the truth. And I think that a gentleman

(08:01):
like Charlie Kirk is the kind oftruth seeker that is going
extinct because if open air debate is no longer possible in
our country without having to dodge projectiles.
And, you know, obviously every time a conservative speaker goes
to a campus, there are protests,there is violence there.
And maybe I'm, I have a bias because I see these things.

(08:22):
But Molotov cocktails at MichaelKnowles, you know, security
issues, when Ben Shapiro goes tospeak somewhere, obviously the
president being shot at. These are not like radicals,
right? This isn't Nick Fuentes.
They're not saying racial slurs and they're not, you know,
talking about fascism and Nazismlike it's a good thing.
These are standard political entities, guys.

(08:45):
And what happens is a pendulum or a backlash always ensues when
things like this take place. And I won't, I won't hide the
ball on my political opinions because of this.
And I think, you know, young menare shifting more conservative
than they ever have. More Gen.
Z young men voted conservative. They were the most conservative

(09:05):
bloc in the country last election cycle.
And they are the ones who have the foremost ability to make
political and physical, you know, kinetic things happen.
And I just, I want the tone to be brought down on all of this.
But I think from Tesla firebombing all the way up until
these political assassinations, I'm not super certain that

(09:28):
that's within the cards. I reached out to one of my dear
friends today who's usually the temperate moderate person, and I
said give me an optimistic view of how this plays out and not
just this political action that was taken today but also the
last couple years. And he said, I don't have
anything optimistic for you, butI do think the end is coming

(09:48):
nigh. And you know, Jesus will
probably be back soon. And you know, that that's
probably good for everybody in reality, not for everybody, but
for most. That's my belief.
And I thank God for Charlie Kirk.
I think he went to go meet his creator today.
And no matter what people think of him, you know, I think he's
he's going to be in a better place.
So I would, I would hazard a guess that this won't be toned

(10:13):
down, but my channel is very political.
I'm not going to lie. You know, it is extremely
political. I don't hide from that.
I'm a dissident among therapistsbecause I, I do not hide the
fact that I'm a believer in Christ.
And I believe also that therapy can be extremely toxic.
And I think that that Overton window is shifting in a

(10:35):
direction that has made the leftvery nervous.
And I just pray and wish that they wouldn't respond with
violence because that man had two young kids and nobody wants
to see those children go withouttheir father.
But they won't even remember whohe is.
And that's a high cost to pay for trying to share what he
believed was true on college campuses.
It's a freaking shame. If somebody doesn't turn the

(10:57):
boil down, the young men of thiscountry will rise up in ways
that people will be extremely uncomfortable with.
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's my fear too, for sure.
I will just really admit that the Casey bit as you and I being
in a similar line of work, I do draw some boundaries around how
transparent I'll be politically just because clients watch this

(11:21):
kind of stuff. And for me, there's really no
upside. There's no upside to my job in
terms of the work, in terms of helping them with what they're
there for when I'm faced with with politics coming up.
But I think like obviously we'reprobably looking at it from
different viewpoints. I'm guessing just what when I
hear you invoke the word they, because as, as someone who

(11:45):
doesn't, who considers himself extremely nonpartisan, it's hard
for me to assign that kind of heinous violence toward any kind
of like political belief. I feel like it has to transcend
that into whether it's mental illness or just extreme, you

(12:06):
know, like radicalism transcendspolitical parties.
I don't think there are like theleft is out there, like
celebrating the death of a man. I see your face.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm naive, but I will share.
There's people. My position is shame.
Celebrating the death. There are people out there that
are celebrating the death. Whether they align politically

(12:28):
with the left or politically with the right, that's on them.
And it's a terrible thing to celebrate someone's death.
It's a terrible thing to celebrate death in general to
when it's a a murder and a tragic murder of a young man, a
husband, a father, a son, a brother.
And I think those things are objectively terrible.
And for those that celebrate it,I think are objectively unwell.

(12:51):
Yeah, that I would totally agreewith.
If you're, you know, celebratingthe assassination of someone
trying to speak on a matter of political discourse, then shame
on you. I mean, come on.
And I do share a lot of the sameoutlook that Casey conveyed in
terms of unfortunately, pessimism as far as the
direction in which it's headed. I see that getting better.

(13:13):
I see increased polarization, you know, just more and more and
more to to the point that I think that you mentioned online
shoot, what we're talking about on a college campus, on a
college campus, a place of higher education, something like
this happening. Like, it seems like we are very
far past the point of nuanced conversation in political

(13:35):
discourse in any kind of reasonable setting.
So if that's going on a college campus, I mean, what we're
talking about on Reddit or something is absolutely screwed.
And that scares me because that's not what I want to see
for this country at all. Yeah.
It's, it's, it's concerning. I think, you know, for us that
we we all have children and I think for us as fathers, you

(13:56):
know, one thing I thought about with this was, you know, are our
children now in a world to whereif they express their political
or religious beliefs, they can be murdered for that as just
cutting it clear and dry? Like is that the world that
we're now in? Like as of today, I feel like
that's the world we just enteredto where on a college campus in

(14:19):
Utah. So Utah, a very conservative
state, by definition, very religious by definition.
He was at Utah Valley University, which I think is
South of Provo, if I remember mygeographics, right, UVU, which
is very, very Mormon and very, very, very conservative.
This happened there. A conservative influencer, a

(14:43):
Christian, was shot in broad daylight in the neck at this
event of his that he's done plenty of.
He's done. He's done them in blue states.
He done them in Minnesota, Chicago, Washington, California,
Oregon, New York, right? He's done them in these deep
blue states, at these deep blue universities.
And the threat of violence I'm sure was there, but the acting

(15:05):
on it had it happen. And this builds on recent
incidents of that young Ukrainian girl that was murdered
on the the subway again, in broad daylight, Another terrible
thing. And so for our our kids growing
up, they're now in this world asof now, like, hey, you know,
gotta be careful what you say where you say it before, right?

(15:26):
Even though we have freedom of speech, it's now amplified and
it's more dangerous. I I want there to be an
optimistic outlook. And it's, it's hard to
especially raising, you know, Christian children or children
who are believers because the Bible says to speak up, to stand
for what you're, you're unashamed in and to be unashamed
of the gospel of Christ. Yeah, it's, I think it's

(15:47):
creating some, some fear. And I don't want to fear monger
because I don't think fear is where we need to be.
But I also think we have to be realistic about it as well.
What does that say to you, Jay, when you mentioned that like and
I and I let me make this clear first, I am probably the least
informed person here out of us for about this individual.

(16:11):
Like I understand generally whatis politics and what he was
known for and that is from an appointment with a client three
hours ago. All right, So that's where I'm
coming from. I want to be crystal clear about
that, but when you mentioned that he has spoken in these much
like bluer states, what does that mean to you that it

(16:32):
occurred in somewhere like Utah Valley State?
Awesome. Did you guys get him there?
I couldn't hear him. Okay, and he's gone.
He bailed on. Jay, he's gone.
Question. Jay hated my question.
So keep going. I mean, he didn't want us
hosting it. He'll get in.
Yeah, I'm sure he'll get in. What about you?
I think patient or yeah, either one of you go ahead, Chris.

(16:53):
I was just saying like what I had seen the guy.
I really don't. I seen some of his stuff.
I just thought it was interest. I never really had a point of
view. It was like he was just, I think
one time I saw some with a Muslim and then a Chris.
I said oh OK, this is interest. I Scroll down, look at some more
and stuff. I just thought he was like
extremely radical. That's, that's my only thing is
like sometimes I think you need to tone it down.

(17:15):
But like I always say, I tell people all the time.
I don't tell people what to do. I, I personally wouldn't be in
public doing something like that.
So I think he maybe was trying to make certain points, but
sometimes he can rub people the wrong way.
That's just the way I, I saw it.And that's why I said I didn't
really, I didn't know the guy's name, but I saw a lot of videos
of him. Like I hate, I don't want to
say. I'm trying to see the best way

(17:35):
to say because I don't want to sound rude.
I wasn't necessarily surprised that somebody shot him because
of the way he, like he did things.
And I was just kind of like, it's not, I don't think anybody
should die. That's my personal thing.
I don't think anybody should die, but I'm not necessarily
surprised at the same time. You understand what I'm saying?
I think but, but I don't. I don't know what you mean.
Like when you say he was doing things in public that you

(17:56):
wouldn't necessarily do. I'm not familiar enough to know
what you mean. Yeah, what I mean by that is
like I would probably tell people like one-on-one my like
my point of view is, but I wouldn't like hold a big event
or anything like that. That's just me personally.
Like if people ask for my opinion or it's like with
one-on-one and talking and stufflike that, because sometimes
people have different points of views and backgrounds and stuff.

(18:17):
That's just my personal thing. Like I said, it seemed like
overall maybe the message could have came across the wrong way,
but I think the message was intended to be good from what
I've seen. But again, like I said, I only,
I never really followed a guy like that.
I just scrolled, rolled down andseen and I just didn't know the
guy's name. But I saw them many, many times
though, so that's just my sincere.
So do you guys think it has moreto do with politics and actual

(18:39):
stance over issues or do you think it has more to do with
just the level of violence and extremism where we are
culturally? Well, those go together for one
side. Really in reality sense, the
French Revolution. You know, when again, one side
gets cornered, violence has pretty much been the way

(19:00):
forward. And, you know, I suppose in, you
know, to Chris's point, I, I suppose we shouldn't be
surprised. The 1960s and early 70s were
much the same. You know, if you made a point
politically, you were subject to, you know, the Pew pews in
public. And at that point, it was, you
know, one whole political familyon the left, which was being,

(19:24):
you know, taken out, which I think, you know, obviously it
still effects our politics today.
But I do think think it's political because even the
mainstream media after his unfortunate passing today, are
talking about how this will be used to score political points
or to try to push a narrative bythe Trump administration.

(19:44):
They've told people who have a mental illness that their their
literal lives are at stake in terms of who wins elections.
And for those of us who are therapists, obviously you've
seen clients in the last six months who believe they need to
move from the country, who believe that they're under

(20:05):
threat directly because that's what they've been told by the
media, by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNNMSNBCNPRI
don't have to go very deep into the rabbit hole of them.
Mainstream media saying that this is literally life and
death, that literally the the election results are life and

(20:27):
death. And when you tell people that
long enough and you lock them intheir homes during COVID and
then you take away some of theircivil liberties and then the
price of everything goes up. Of course, you know, and as
we've seen since the last generation, digital natives have
twice as much anxiety and depression as any other
generation. That's been measured.

(20:48):
And then we place everyone on psychotropic drugs to try to
solve the problem. We decline in religiosity and
belief in God. And then and then you tell
people again that their life is in danger if their political
affiliate doesn't get into office.
So no, we shouldn't be surprised, but also we should
not in any way condone support. And I'm not willing to accept

(21:13):
that this is just the temperature now, but I would
again, you know, we want to be faithful to the fact that Christ
and God can be the author of really, I think a revival is the
way out and the way through if there is a revival of faith,
which there is also among the youngest generation.
Similarly, with their attendancetowards one political party,

(21:36):
young men have gone back to church and liturgical
traditional churches at a higherrate than they ever have ever
since it's been measured in America.
So the resurgence of faith and when young men lead, usually a
society will will follow whetherthey age into it or whether they
lead their young ladies bride families into it.

(21:56):
When a dad leads the family in faith, the family converts.
And so my prayer is that we really have a revival and I
honestly don't. I don't have any.
I don't have any misgivings thatthere won't be a large push
against it and that there won't be a large percentage of people
who will never. But when the church becomes

(22:16):
persecuted is which I think thiswas a political and also a
persecutory act that happened today.
Every time that the church has been persecuted throughout
history, it's like a a booth that's trying to stamp out in a
dusty shop and you just see the particles go all throughout.
And when he attempted to stamp out whatever was underneath, it

(22:37):
just spreads and proliferates throughout the entirety of a
culture because the church looksbetter and more attractive when
they are the revolutionaries, when they are the dissidents,
when they are being persecuted, then that tracks young men to
the church. That gives them more 'cause
because it's actually a 'cause it's not just the cultural
hegemonic force, then it's a revolutionary force.

(22:59):
Guess what young men want to do?They want to join a revolution.
And so when these types of things happen to faithful men, I
think that they're missing the forest for the trees.
If they actually thought that, that, you know, assassinating a
man like Charlie was going to dowhat the intended, unless they
just wanted backlash. The intention is not going to

(23:19):
land because men, young men who followed Charlie or Christ or,
you know, see the church as being persecuted will be more
attracted to that type of life. And so my prayer is that a
revival occurs in our country. I pray for peace, but also
hardening the target. My kids go to a Christian
School. We talked about a school

(23:40):
shooting last week from somebodywho had a mental illness who
believed that they needed to, you know, UN alive themselves in
a in a heinous way by taking others with them.
It wasn't but a few months ago prior to that, that that
happened again at another Catholic school.
And it it seems to be the more that those things happen, the
more it it makes sense to hardenthe targets and being faithful

(24:02):
and being peaceful doesn't mean that you shouldn't be prepared
and to harden that your home, which I think is reasonable, you
know, regardless of your political stripes and regardless
of where you live. I just think it's wisdom as a
father. And I totally understand my
brother-in-law, God bless him, like a, you know, one of these
men that would never have a weapon in his home.

(24:23):
And I totally understand his premise, but I will not leave
my, my family unprepared like that.
And I just don't think that thatis the climate we're in.
And I don't think it's unreasonable to harden your
home, harden the target, harden the schools, make sure that we
show our priorities and who we want to protect first and
foremost, which is our children.And you know, you'll know a

(24:44):
society strikes by how they protect and treat their
children. And they've been on the
backburner long enough. I mean, yeah, I agree a good
deal of what you said, just. Yeah, I, I, I think I am want to
be careful about conflating logic and intentionality with
the actions that happened today.Yeah, Paul, even if they're
politically motivated for that person, even if that's was the,

(25:08):
you know, the nut for them, I don't think that necessarily
equates to like a logical progression.
I think it does. I'm gonna I'm gonna have Paul
weigh in since he just joined us.
Yeah, I and I, I'm jumping in late.
It's good to see you guys, man. I jumped in and it was heavy,
which makes sense because days like today are heavy.
We're seeing a lot more violencein our country.

(25:29):
You know, anytime there's a shooting.
I'm struck by conversations I'vehad with folks who were
visiting, being long term from outside of the United States.
One guy from Germany, couple of families from Norway and.
I was always struck by how struck they were by.
The gun violence in America and because both of them were like,

(25:53):
wow, like our, our police officers aren't even carrying
guns around. This is this is strange.
And it was striking me because Igrew up in the country.
So my stepdad had a gun cabinet.I mean, hearing gunshots was a
regular thing. You know, what's interesting is,
you know, Casey, you were talking about knowing someone
who wouldn't have a gun in theirhome.
And I'm, I'm actually one of those guys.
I just for various reasons, I don't.

(26:15):
And actually, I would probably be someone that somebody would
say, well, you're a fool then because of where you live.
Because literally today there isgunshots ringing out half a
block from my house. I mean, the community I live in,
it is not uncommon for there to be gunshots.
And, and it's such a hard topic because it's incredibly divisive
in our nation for many, many reasons.
But I think the big piece, and you know, we're a group of men

(26:38):
who have been talking about God.I'm struck by how effectively
the enemy can bring division. So we look at something like
today here's, here's the one thing I know about today.
There's a whole lot we don't know.
There's a whole lot we don't know, right?
Like I've heard that they have apossible suspect, but we don't
know the motives, they said. But what we do know is that

(26:58):
there's a. Whole lot of.
Speculation from across the political spectrum, from across
faith spectrums, because when wehit moments like this one, we
have this natural desire to understand what happened.
There's a safety element like there's this desire to not be in
the dark. There's this fear element.
But what's also happening in ournation right now is is a lean

(27:20):
into the divisiveness because we've fallen into this sides
mentality. And that's something man.
Anytime there's something that has this political bent to it, I
am just struck by I'll read there's this passage that a
friend of mine, Boyd loves to quote and it's from Joshua 5 and
starting at verse 13 says now when Joshua was near Jericho, he

(27:41):
looked up and saw a man standingin front of him with a drawn
sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and said,
are you for us or for our enemies?
Right. And that's that tends to be I
think I popped in earlier in case you were talking about
debate like that tends to be where we fall with debates is
like, well, is this person on myside or on the other side?
We're very much side mentality. So he says, are you for us or

(28:02):
for our enemies? Neither, he replied.
But as commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come and my
friend Boyd loves that passage because that's not that's not an
appropriate answer. Like it's like, are you for this
side or this side? It's got to be one of the two.
And this Angel of the Lord's like no, because he's not
playing into this human nonsensethat we get caught into.
And what's hard is outside of the faith aspect, there are

(28:25):
things happening, there are perspectives, there are systems
that work and systems that don't.
But man, what does it look like to be a man of God and
understanding that sometimes this is God's position.
He's looking at our human logic,our human approaches to things.
And he's like, man, y'all are socaught up in the wrong weeds
like you, You don't understand who I am in the midst of.

(28:47):
So you don't understand that my ways are not your ways.
My thoughts are not your thoughts.
And and the place where it gets breaks my heart the most within
the church is when we allow likeprofound divisiveness and
division. And again, we can get into the
nitty gritty and that because like there's.
It's a It's a hefty. Topic but but the body of Christ
is constantly amputating its limbs and and if we can't figure

(29:10):
that out in the smaller areas, in the day-to-day areas, then
when something big like today happens, we're not going to be
geared up. We're already going to be
poised, you know, And so, man, Ijust my, my.
For the church. But also at the same time, and
we're talking about political violence.
I mean, we brought up a man, Jesus, who was a victim of

(29:31):
political violence. Right.
Like part of human nature throughout human history has
been stuff like that. And.
Yeah. Today, it looks.
Different. We've got automatic weapons.
They didn't have that back then,but man, oh man, human nature
has this been sometimes to either extreme self preservation
or extreme evil or things that can lead to these moments and

(29:52):
the body of Christ is invited tobe in, but not of the world to
operate in a different way to understand human logic.
But to be. Operating from a logic that is
actually beyond our comprehension.
And we can't do that on our own.We need God and we can't do that
on our own. We need the body.
But we we've got some work to do.
To. Figure out how to live in that

(30:12):
today. And as young dads, what are we
communicating to our kids and who they need to be in this
world? Not just from a preservation
position, but what does it mean to be a follower of Christ, a
follower of God, when we have noidea what the world's going to
look like for them in 10/15/20 years?
Yeah, CS Lewis, I believe, or itmay have been Tolkien said that

(30:35):
we shouldn't discourage childrenfrom believing that they need to
be dragon slayers and to believein Dragons in the 1st place.
Part of the income location of those stories into the lives of
children in the beginning is so that they would be prepared to,
as Joshua one says, be strong and very courageous.
You know, God calls his people to do that three or four times

(30:56):
in that first chapter. And it wasn't to go and use, you
know, anything but kinetic meansto overtake the Holy Land, to
overtake the promised land. And while I don't, I'm not
calling for any of that and I don't wish that upon our
country. The use of political power by
the church is historically the norm.

(31:17):
It's not an aberration of our modern era.
Actually, the aberration is thatit's not being used politically.
And granted, it is when people like Charlie Kirko speak and
they share their faith in the public forum, and they also so
own a PAC community for buildingthe financial systems of the
elections. Of course, that is sort of the

(31:39):
church acting on a super PAC. But on the other hand, I think
that the political order was more orderly, even if it was
monarchical at times when the church took political action
more seriously and more forthrightly, as they were
called to do quite frequently throughout the Old Testament.
Now, Christ did reset the table and you know, say render unto

(32:02):
Caesar what is his. And you know, he did.
He was killed by political action.
You know, a crucified next to or, or Barabbas was an
insurrectionist of all things. So, you know, we do see that he
sort of rewrites the systems in that.
But also the church can provide for a better order among some of
these things. But we've been very hesitant to

(32:24):
use faith oriented machinations in our politics.
And I'm just not sure that that's the way forward.
And I'm not saying that we should have a, a theocracy over
here, but wouldn't it be better if there was a foundation of
truth that was oriented to the Bible that was brought to bear
on the polity just like it was at the foundation of our
country? Even though many of them were

(32:45):
deists and, and you know, not necessarily Christians, What
they oriented to was a, a standard that we had followed
for 250 years with relative order and peace and a Pax
Americana for the last 80, to befrank.
And you know, the only time thatwe started to lose it was when

(33:06):
the church took a step back frompolitical order.
Chris, go ahead. You're muted.
Oh. He's great.
Oh, OK, there you go. No, I wasn't really going to say
something. I was just going to say like, I
know this might be a little bit off topic, but like, so last
discussion we had Roblox and like Paul was in here, he was
talking and I was thinking, I said this sound like Bible said.
I said this is good. You should just told me.

(33:27):
I would have came in here like whip my Bible.
I mean, I'm cool with. I actually like it.
And then I was thinking at the end, but I didn't want to
embarrass nobody. I was thinking like, honestly, I
kind of felt like we should haveprayed at the end.
Yeah. I.
Don't know how y'all felt because I was like well he over
there dropping the Bible. Wherever Paul is turns into a
Bible study very quickly. Same with Casey as well.

(33:47):
Those two men, they know they'reword very, very well.
So I do compliment that on that.But I I do want to want to close
this up. Any, any other thoughts from
Paul Casey, my Chris, any any other thoughts on this or I'm
going to, I'm going to wrap thistopic up for us.
Yeah, I would. I would just say, you know, in
light of everything that we've thrown out there, I think
another thing actually the thingthat I said was clear to me, I

(34:10):
think is clear in general. There's a whole lot we don't
know. And I was facilitating a
community Bible study today. So we'll bring some more Bible
in for you, Chris. And we were talking it's it's
interesting that we were talkingabout Ruth, but somehow the
topic got into to sin and understanding what sin was and
this, that and the other. And by the end we had spent some

(34:31):
time looking at 1 the Apostle Paul's passage and the Apostle
Paul, he, he knew scripture. I mean, he knew the scrolls.
He said he was a Pharisee, a Pharisee in a Hebrew of Hebrews
and unto the law blameless. And then he says, I don't
understand what I do because what I want to do I don't do,
and what I hate to do I do. And this idea that this guy who

(34:51):
had been knocked off his feet byJesus.
Who was like we would. Look at him and say, oh man,
he's like the missionary of missionaries.
He's saying I don't understand because I keep on doing the
stuff. That I hate.
And then he gets into Romans 8, so that was seven, I think.
And then he gets into 8 and whathe indicates is, is what what
our hope is in is in addition toJesus is the Spirit.

(35:15):
Jesus talked about sending this helper who will teach you all
things. And I, and I named that to say,
the older I get, the more I realize we just don't get it.
Like collectively. And we've been fighting and
we're just getting worse and worse.
Like our ability to work together as a country seems to
be like we're failing. We're failing so bad at it.
And human history has been filled with that.
And we have been given these brains that can think by God.

(35:38):
It's great, it's amazing. But my favorite life long
passage is Proverbs 3 five and six.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding in all your ways. Submit to Him and He will set
your path straight, which means he's given us understanding.
He's inviting us to use it, but it's the leaning on it that
becomes a problem. And so that's my hope is like
moving forward, I don't know that we are going to be able to

(36:00):
1 figure it out. And then even if we could figure
it out, agree on it. But man, what we see in Acts is
a body of people who had every reason to not be on the same
team. And somehow they were sometimes
somehow they became this family that said, you know what?
This is my house, but I'm going to get rid of my house for your
sake. So you have what you need.
Like that is not a natural way of living.

(36:23):
And yet they did it. And it's because not because
they had this grand idea, they gathered together and planned
it. No, in the beginning of Acts, it
says the reason is, is because they were just praying.
They didn't know what to do. And the spirit came down and
showed them a way of living thatmade no sense that they never
would have chosen. But to this day, we're still
still talking about it. We're not always living it, but

(36:43):
we're aware of it. It didn't fade away.
And so when it comes to our nation, when it comes to the
world, the role of the church isto stop leaning on its own
understanding and actually figure out what does it mean to
really trust God and submit to him.
Until we do that, we're just going to keep on being like the
Israelites preceding that passage in Joshua, who kept on
saying, Oh yeah, we need your God.

(37:03):
And then we don't want your manna anymore.
We want the cucumbers in Egypt. We don't want this anymore.
We're going to keep on doing that because we got our ideas of
what's best and we're just not smart.
Amen to that. All right, boys.
Well, I have a something I wroteafter I heard this.
I heard this news about Charlie and I started thinking about it
and I thought I thought pretty deep about it.

(37:24):
And so I'm just going to share this with you.
It's a little bit long. You guys may need tissues for
this. So I please forgive me.
I'll titled this tonight. Tonight a mother or it goes
tonight. Tonight a mother and father cry.
Tonight a family mourn. Tonight family photos will not
be looked at the same. Tonight so many ask why.
Tonight a wife became a widow. Tonight 2 little girls lost

(37:48):
their physical, spiritual and emotional protector.
Tonight 2 little girls won't seetheir dad walk in the door.
Sorry I get choked. This is kind of long so bear
with me. What?
Tonight 2 little girls won't cuddle their dad before bed.
Tonight 2 little girls won't getkisses, hugs or a soft smile
from their dad. Tonight 2 little girls won't

(38:10):
have a normal Father's Day ever again.
Tonight 2 little girls won't have their dad at their first
day of kindergarten. Tonight 2 little girls won't
have their dad there for Donuts with dad at school.
Tonight 2 little girls won't getto go to a daddy daughter dance
with their dad. Tonight 2 little girls won't
have a dad cheering them on in their sports.

(38:31):
Tonight 2 little girls won't have their dad there to see them
grow into young women. Tonight, 2 little girls won't
have their dad there to scare off the boys.
Tonight 2 little girls won't have their dad there to comfort
them after a breakup. Tonight 2 little girls won't
have their dad there at their high school graduation.
Tonight 2 little girls won't have their dad dropping them off

(38:53):
at their first day of college. Tonight 2 little girls when they
call home won't be able to talk to their dad.
Tonight 2 little girls won't have their dad there in the
crowd when they earn their college degrees.
Tonight 2 little girls won't have their dad there for dad
there for her boyfriend to ask for his blessing.
Tonight 2 little girls won't be walked on the aisle by their
dad. Tonight 2 little girls won't be

(39:15):
able to call their dad and say hi grandpa, I'm pregnant.
Tonight 2 little girls won't have a grandma and a grandpa
Kirk's house to take their grandkids to.
Tonight 2 little girls start to talk about their dad in the past
tense. Tonight 2 little girls had their
lives changed forever. Tonight many mourn.
Tonight some celebrate. Tonight many are also disgusted.
Tonight we pray for the Kirk's, tonight we pray for our nation,

(39:38):
Tonight we hug our little ones extra tight.
And most of all, tonight we unite as one nation under God.
Go ahead, Chris, I wrote that without AI, by the way.
That was all off the Dome and from the heart.
Now, I could tell us from the heart.
I never really thought of like the when you were reading it,
honestly, I'm gonna be right. I've never really thought about
all that. But that is every single thing
you said is right. I was like, Dang, I think

(39:58):
sometimes really, that poem mademe think, and I'm not trying to
be selfish. That's not what I'm doing.
I'm like, sometimes I think as fathers we do need to slow down.
And just enjoy the moments with our kids.
So I'm actually speaking to myself, but I'm actually
speaking as a whole too because we don't even know.
But I will say, before you read that poem, I thought about
today, like what was his last meal today are like, what did he

(40:23):
tell his kids? Now that is something I thought
about before you read that. It's just something that just
came to my head because it's like we don't really know.
I mean, even me like, and I still, I'm still not even, I
can't even, it's hard for me to even talk about it.
Like I have my friend that died in a car accident, like about a
month or two. And like I still I talked about
a little bit, but I can't even, it's hard for me to even bring

(40:43):
the terms to even talk about herbecause really really bothered
me. And I still I talked to myself
about it, but I won't talk to anybody else about it because it
really, really bothered me a lot.
That's just my 2 saying I'm not trying to be all about me, but
I'm am thinking about like man, I never thought about that deep.
But it's like, what did he tell this kid before he left?
We don't even know. Did he give him a hug or did he

(41:05):
just rush off on a plane and just say I gotta go?
So we don't know. Yeah, I hear you.
And so I'm going to I'm going tomove on.
I'll let you guys wipe your tears from that and move us on.
So I'm going to turn down the temperature a bit this week and
bring some light hearted fun into the conversation.
So if you've been on social media or you follow baseball,
the MLB at all, you probably have heard of Phillies Karen,

(41:28):
the Phillies Karen. And so a young Phillies fan, a
young boy and his dad were at a Marlins game, a Marlins versus
Phillies game, and a home run was hit by Harrison Bader of the
Phillies. And the dad went and got the
ball for his son. It fell a couple rows.
So it fell out of the grass. And if you got been to a
baseball game and a home runs here near you, it's it's a it's

(41:48):
a dogpile. Whoever gets there gets there
and, you know, you just walk away and you go Chefs.
That's OK. Maybe next time.
Wasn't meant to be. And but this lady, she even had
a Karen haircut. The Internet is calling her
Karen Phillies. Karen decided to go over to the
young boy, grab the father by the arm and berate him to get
the ball from the young boy because she felt entitled that

(42:10):
that ball was hers because it was hit near her.
And so my thoughts on this is a suck it up lady.
You didn't get the home run ball.
Bummer. Go cry about it.
B Baseball's a kids game. It let the kid have it.
That's going to be more memorable for the kid than it is
for you. Plus it's Harrison Bader.
It's no one special. There's no special importance to
that ball or nothing. I'm it's not going to win you

(42:32):
$1,000,000 or anything for trying to auction it.
It's not Aaron Judges 62nd or whatever, right?
It's nothing special. It's Harrison Bader and it's
it's not a Marlins game. Okay, tickets probably cost like
$2.00 to get in for that game, let's be real.
So what The aftermath of this I think has been the most
hilarious part. A Marlins worker had come up and

(42:54):
given the kid a gift bag and said, hey, after the game, we're
taking you down to the tunnel after the game, kid gets a
signed bat and another autographed ball.
And it just the coolest experience ever.
The Marlins and the Phillies crushed it.
But the woman was also berated on the Internet.
You know she after around she found out and let go from her

(43:15):
job. Do you guys want to guess?
If you know, don't say anything.But do you guys want to guess
what her career was? Nope, good guess, not HR.
I love to guess. I was going to say bird watcher
or. Something, gentlemen, would you
believe me if I told you that this woman was an educator?
Or mentor school teacher. Yeah.
Was a teach, was a public schooleducator.

(43:36):
She's since been removed. She was.
From her position, according to Facebook.
I don't. Know where the kids?
But yeah, it's and it's been turned into a whole meme.
The Savannah Bananas did a remake of it at a banana ball
game like within the same week and did a parody of it.
So I just think the story is hilarious because you see other
instances of like a grown man getting the ball and going woo

(43:57):
Hoo, and then a kids right thereand he just hands it over to the
kid and the kids jumping up and down.
They're all excited and whatnot because that's what baseball's
about. I'm a baseball guy.
That's what baseball's about. It's not about you as a grown
man. It's about the kid.
And so do you guys have any thoughts on this, this funny
story? And then if whoever's got
thoughts going to share them. And then I'm going to, I'm going
to re up the temperature in our next story actually.

(44:19):
Sir, I didn't want her to lose her job.
That's not right either, honestly.
But when she approaches the man,he goes like this.
Like one of those. Yeah.
It wasn't very masculine. Not just like the back off
hands, but like the I'm so scared that I pissed myself kind
of hands, you know, like. Like you hear the far emoji in
the head. Yeah, As comically as Jay tells

(44:39):
it, this is about the dad. The dad should have said, lady,
tough luck. I mean, he's 12, you know, like,
get through it. But the dad, this is a perfect.
It's a perfect encapsulation of where dads are in our culture
right now. And I heard an interview with
him. I'm way too deep into this

(44:59):
story. I promise I'll shut up.
I heard an interview with the guy later and he's like, you
know, you know, I just thought it would be easier if I just,
you know, let her have it. And like, you know, I thought
I'd teach him a lesson like tough, you know, thing, tough
things happen. And it's like the lesson you
taught him was that you're not willing to stand up for yourself
or for him. And quite frankly, he just

(45:21):
learned the lesson that you needto do better than your own dad.
And that is pathetic. It was it was exceedingly
pathetic, that man. I'm glad that the the team gave
his child some things along the line, but good guys, we got to
stand up for our kid better thanthat.
You know, it's a baseball this time.
But what if he was getting bullied at school or there was

(45:42):
another impetus that was more serious?
You know, come on, it just droveme crazy.
Come on, buddy, I just wanted tosee it replay and and him not at
least don't do the scared, you know, super super faint soft guy
hands. You know, when when she
approached them anyway, watch the replay when you can.
It's funny. It's that.

(46:02):
I want to see that. I'm dying to see that.
I think it's interesting that we're in a time now where more
than ever in all of human history, every moment can be
captured and accessible throughout the world.
So it's wild for me about this is my first thought when I saw
that was again, because we had just had a story about Aceo at

(46:23):
the US Open snatching a hat froma kid.
And and here's what's really hard about all this is this
stuff explodes like wildfire, but it explodes for various
reasons. Some people like want to capture
the moment and show what happened.
Other people want to capitalize on it and other people want to
spin it for their own gain. And so suddenly you realize, I

(46:45):
don't know well, what's actuallytrue anymore because I was
trying to look up the US Open thing and I was remembering what
I had read his response was, andI found an article that was like
the complete opposite. I found one thing that said he
was like, well, that's just the name of the game.
You got to just, you got to reach in and get what you want.
And then I found something else that was like, he actually was
like, you know what? I hurt the kid and I'm so sorry.

(47:05):
Right. Like and so it really, you know,
it, it speaks to this idea of I don't know.
I want to word this but it's like.
We always need to be prepared tobe wise and authentic in who we
are because you never know when a camera is going.
And that counters how we act as humans sometimes because we,

(47:27):
we're kind of, we had this default response of if I can get
away with it or if nobody knows.But that's just not, not the
reality anymore because you could have 20 different cell
phone angles and and then you'reat the will of interpretation
and man, oh man, can people be ruthless.
But I, I agree with you, Casey, like when this stuff gets to the

(47:48):
point of job loss, sometimes it sometimes it's warranted,
sometimes it goes too far. And this the woman I saw later
videos, I mean, she was, I don'tknow if she was having a day or
what, but like she ended up flicking off the crowd and all
that. And so, you know, she was, she
was feeling some things, but shewasn't on the job, right.
So it's like, but man, oh man, are we are we preparing yourself

(48:12):
out of season so that when we are on display, we had this
muscle memory to respond with wisdom?
Or are we just kind of hoping we'll get it right in the
moment? Because if.
You're the latter better. I hope you get lucky.
So I just quickly Casey was cracking me up when he was
describing they kind of reenacting that.
And yeah, some of the pictures were awesome.

(48:34):
That guy's hands, great description.
The the the care cut. I couldn't have imagined a more
aggressive care and cut. It was awesome.
Mike, are are you OK if I play it real quick?
Yeah, go for it. I'm gonna play it.
I haven't pulled up. Just share it on the screen real
quick. One second.
I was on mute. I was trying to get you before
you. You dove in there.
Watch the hands. Watch the hands.
She. Grabs him dude.

(48:55):
OK dude, they might go ahead andcontinue.
That was just a clip. I just wanted to show it for
context just so we could all enjoy that for a moment.
Yeah, No, I'm glad you did it. It was funny.
Casey's reenactment was perfect.It was awesome.
Yeah. I, I, I've really by much the
most, I guess substantial part of like any kind of reaction I
would have to, that would be like, to what Paul said.

(49:16):
And that was like being preparedfor that moment.
And really like there is for me at least, one of the the biggest
lessons I've learned in life is there there is no way to prepare
yourself for like any given moment at any even time.
So practicing being yourself andbeing authentic all the time and

(49:43):
just showing up as yourself makes life a hell of a lot
easier because you're just goingto be, you don't have to worry
about like what camera's on you and how you're going to react.
Excellent. Yeah, and it goes to what are
the foundations that you're building things off of?
Because I think you're right. Like you can't plan for every
situation. That's impossible.
There are 1,000,000 possible situations.
But if you have foundations for what drives you.

(50:06):
So again, if like my foundation is to love God and love others,
then that's going to equip me inany situation because then I
could say, well, what does it look like to love God and love
others in this? And I think that's our problem
is we don't always actually havefoundational values.
I mean, this is the Pharisees problem is they had all the
rules, but you know, you could have all the rules and that's

(50:27):
not going to help you if you don't have a good foundation set
for why you're following those. And man, cuz yeah, you, you
can't predict, you can't predictsomething like that.
And there's a lot of hard situations in that.
Like what does it look like for a man to engage with a woman in
that space? You know, what does it look like
to set an example for your son? What does it look like when you

(50:47):
know you're on camera? What does it look like when it's
just a ball? What it like all of these are
different factors in the one moment and you don't have time
to say, well, hold on, let me let me let me work through all
this. So that's a question we got to
ask yourself is because I'm a I'm a correct what I said.
I said we don't always have foundations.
I think we do. I think we always do have
foundations. The problem is, is when we don't

(51:08):
know what our foundations are. And if you know your foundation
is stone and solid, boom, good. But if you've got a foundation,
it's just saying so are we cognizant of what drives our
decisions, what drives our choices, what what drives our
values? Because if we aren't, then in
the moment is not a good time tofind out.

(51:29):
That nails it for me. I mean that that's my approach
professionally as my like approach personally is.
I always start with the values because from there we can
discern, OK, we can look at actions and say how much does
this align with values or how little does this align with
values. And the more practiced you are,

(51:51):
the more your brain is used to acting on what are your core
values. The less you are thinking about
what your action is or how you're being action might be
perceived or how you might have to change an action given a
certain set of circumstances or scenario.
And I, I again, I'd have to makethis, this is fun and not to be

(52:12):
like a huge issue, but yeah, I struggled with that a lot of my
life. So that that has been a a a
major insight for me is just to practice life by my values and
that basically I got trust the process kind of philosophy.
Yep, love it. Casey, can you hit us with that
replay one more time of your impression of that?
There it is Perfect, perfect. All right guys, I do want to

(52:35):
move us on to the next thing here so it's September.
It's September for those of us that work in the mental health
field, it is suicide prevention is suicide awareness month
nationally. And this month holds a very
special place in my heart. During the month of September,
about six years ago, I lost my younger brother to an overdue.
So September holds a very, very special place in my heart for
this, for this month. And so I wanted to talk about

(52:57):
what the month is, what suicide prevention and just talk about
it. Have a conversation about it
today because I think it's so important.
I want to add in a couple thingshere to give us context before
we jump in. As of June numbers that were
reported back in June, 444,536 suicide had happened in.

(53:17):
I want to say this was a global number in 2025 S just six months
in 75 to 80% of those were male suicides, 333,402 male suicides
as of June 2024. Globally, there's there's so

(53:39):
many numbers there. 60 men per hour, 1438 men a day, 2096 men a
week, these 3750 men a month and525,000 men a year.
And these are these are global numbers.
Again, when you take the whole world in the context of what not
suicide rate in the in the USI think as we know is 4 men to one

(54:00):
woman. And so it's 4X set of men male
suicides to women suicides men. Women do attempt suicide more
often than men, however, but by less lethal means.
Men, if we're going to do it like we do, if we're going to do
a job right, we're going to do it right the first time, even
though there's no joking matter with this, but it is, you know,
exactly what it is. But the men use more lethal

(54:22):
rates, having a higher success, successful suicide than than
women. So those are just some
statistics I wanted to drop. And I, I think this conversation
is so important. And another thing I wanted to
add here. Well, I'll come back to it when
I, when I, when I talk about it again, it's a, it's a hard
month. It's a hard pill to swallow
knowing that there's 300 or 400,000 men probably at this

(54:47):
point in 2025 that have taken their lives.
It's just hard to hard to hard to swallow for me.
Chris, go ahead. Yeah, You know, I've never told
you. I know we all still first time
meeting. I'm pretty open about it.
But yeah, like, my dad actually killed herself.
That was back when, because I'm 36 now, my dad killed herself
and he was like, when I was 19. So I think originally it took a

(55:07):
toll on me. Like I wouldn't say I really
like, I didn't like jump off a bridge or do nothing crazy, but
like I was drinking for a while and different things like that.
And for me originally when I first started making content, it
was about my whole goal was to help men as far as like incur.
Well, actually it started off just being like motivation.
And then I kept praying and I was asking God, like, what do

(55:28):
you want me to do? And then it kind of evolved
overtime with like helping fathers and stuff like that.
So for me, I've always, I guess that so I've never really told a
lot of people about that, but it's like, that's what really
drives me to like make a lot of content.
So it's hard for me to stop sometimes making content because
I look at it as like like fathers because my dad was like
adopted, but he was adopted by his uncle.

(55:49):
So then it's like 1 generate. Then he got the next generation.
So for me, I'm always there for my kids.
I really don't talk about it that much because I always say
like that's something that he felt like he wanted to do.
I'm not mad or anything like that.
I always said my dad was amazing.
My dad was there for me for every single event.
He has some demons of his own heneeded to deal with.
I can't help that man do that. And then like I tell people, but

(56:11):
that's really for me, that's like the root cause of like why
I really, really make my content.
It's about helping kids and thenhelping the men become better
men because it all ties in together.
Because a lot of people, I tell people all the time, like even I
told Jay by the song Time, I don't want to mention a guy's
name or nothing like that. But it's like in this space when
you're making content about fathers, like I'll call it

(56:32):
getting it out the mud. If you ain't really been
divorced, you've been sleeping on your mama's couch, you know,
like really like in some real hard situations are going to
court. I'm not really trying to hear
nothing you got to say because alot of guys go through a lot of
things and I'll talk to guys personally.
I tell people like women don't know.
Now I know because I talked to the guys, but the guys that go
through a lot of different things and I tell people that.

(56:54):
So I've always, it's really something dear to my heart.
Well, like a man says he's struggling or he's going through
something like that. And I take that stuff very
seriously though. That's my 2 saying I'm gonna let
Paul go. I like Paul.
Paul this Paul, you cool? Thanks for sharing.
Yeah. Well, and, and that last piece
of what you said, you know, whensomeone comes to you and say

(57:15):
they're going through it like you take it seriously and you're
able to do that because you havea very personal connection, like
Jay, you have a very personal connection, right?
Like to something, but to something very serious that a
lot of people don't. And, you know, we can look at
other areas in life where there you can you can recognize a big
difference between when you didn't have an experience of

(57:37):
something and then when you did and how you responded to that.
Right. My wife and I first got married.
You know, we treated Father's Day and Mother's Day the same,
you know? Yeah, it's father's, mother's.
When we had our miscarriage and then another miscarriage, we
never treated Mother's and Father's Day the same because we
realized there's a lot of peopleout there that are this is going

(57:57):
to be a hard day, right? So we're talking about something
like suicide. It's one of those things where
on the. Outside of it.
It can be very hard for people to understand because it's so
final. Like it looks like giving up.
It's like, I would never, I would never do that.
And so then your advice in that space is just stop thinking like
that. Just don't do that.

(58:18):
Just think about what it's goingto do to everyone else.
And like, there's some legitimate stuff in there, but
it misses. What you just noted is like, I
take it seriously. Like you didn't even tell us
what you do in that space. You didn't have to because your
first starting point is I'm going to take this person
seriously because where they areright now, they need to, they
need me to be serious with them,to actually be with them,

(58:39):
present with them. And I've never, I don't have
anybody personally that has committed suicide.
There are some indirect connections.
So I don't have that close connection piece and I've never
had, you know, suicidal ideation, but I have hit some
seasons where things got so hardthat I, I had this moment where

(59:01):
I almost felt like God was giving me a glimpse into it's
like, I don't want it in my life, but I could see how
somebody would want to in this moment.
Like the way I feel right now, especially if I didn't know who
God was and actually believe he was going to work.
Even though I'm like, where are you right now?
God? Like, I get it, I get it.
And I've had that moment in someother spaces too, that outside

(59:22):
of that, it'd be easy to judge. And so I think that's the one
big thing I would say is we've got it.
We cannot be so quick to judge people and we need to be quicker
to do what you describe Chris, where it's like I'm going to be
with people first and foremost, like I'm going to meet them
where they are. This man, this.
Stuff like it goes deeper than we realize, deeper than we

(59:43):
understand. And like we talked about this
last time and Mike, you got intosome of this last time.
Like sometimes there's past stuff that weighs into this that
people don't even know. They know, you don't realize,
they don't know why they're feeling the way they're feeling.
They just know how they're feeling.
And so how can we get better at just being with people and then
working out the details as we gothrough?
There's something like this. Like the stakes are

(01:00:05):
exceptionally high, so I'd rather err on the side of being
wise than being quick or assumptive.
Casey Mike, I would love for youguys to speak to this topic of
male suicide not only personallybut also like clinically as well
with your experience and your expertise and all this.

(01:00:26):
How you feeling Casey? I can go.
So I think that the numbers are actually really short sighted
because the overdose epidemic is8020 men.
So it's 5 to 1. The you know, rate of of self
deletion at that is 5 to 1. And granted some of those are
accidental and I do think that they've tried to classify them a

(01:00:50):
little bit more rigorously. Of course, who would know?
There's at least probably another 40 to 50,000 per year
that you could tack onto that asthe result of the overdose
epidemic that's been, you know, been pretty static over 5 years
as far as ranging from about 80,000 to 110,000 deaths per

(01:01:13):
year. So I know having worked in the
substance use industry for the majority in my career, that a
lot of those hopelessness deathsof despair, I think is a bit
more of a robust classification for including self deletion and
accidental or you know, just intentional, but using drugs as

(01:01:34):
the as agent. So I think that men are still
adapting to the new norm when itcomes to our work, our roles in
the family, our roles in our household.
And, you know, the deindustrialisation of my region
in the Midwest plays a huge partdue to, well, you know, labour
jobs and things like that havingessentially gone away in 30

(01:01:58):
years. And the high paying ones where
you could raise a family, definitely having gone away.
And add on top of that some of the way that men are one of the
favorite targets in public. And since the social media era,
the Me Too movement and others, along with, you know, increasing
women seeking divorce at 70% clip, along with, you know,

(01:02:20):
infidelity being at least more of a balanced proposition than
it used to be, It's just really hard for men to know where they
fit. And I too, I'm, I'll just be
honest, I'm the survivor of attempting on my own life.
God, I don't talk about it oftenthat we did this last time,
didn't we? I I'd always go further than I
should probably, but I was in the midst of my own addiction.

(01:02:43):
Because you're. You're not the only one sitting
here right now that has had thisstruggle, so I can I can speak
to it myself that I've been beenon that side of the darkness as
well. So I would just, God rescued me,
although I wouldn't have hoped that he would at the time.
I was, you know, off secluded, like a mile off the road in a
secluded area. And the red and blue came to my

(01:03:05):
rescue. I wasn't very happy about it at
the time, but I was literally saved by God and really mad
about it at that moment. But it would have been impulsive
and somewhat the result of my addictions, along with a young
man's view of sort of the brevity of a problem versus, you
know, the eternity that I could do with my life had I wanted to

(01:03:28):
persist. And that was the time I, I made
the promise to myself to quit using drugs and alcohol.
And I made it out of the psych ward a few days later.
And I lasted like 4 days in my abstinence push.
So it and the, the heat got turned down a little bit.
I went back to drinking and wentback to smoking.
And then eventually I was crossing all of the thresholds

(01:03:51):
of all the things you promised yourself you're not going to do,
like using, you know, extreme measures like needles and other
things. I don't know, YouTube's probably
going to hate this part, but whatever.
So having been on that side of it, I, I began to ask myself
when I got sober why? Because I very obviously, you
know, wanted to and should have been gone at that time.

(01:04:13):
And so I started to try to use my understanding, new
understanding of who God might be to begin to ask the question
like, OK, why would God rescue me?
Obviously, I've been looked out for and not just in that
situation, but in others, you know, accidental overdose, you
know, walking the line, cocaine and other things.

(01:04:33):
And so when I asked myself the question, why, why did I did I
survive? Why was I saved?
And why would I be saved in opposition to someone else who
deserved it potentially much more.
And that's where I began to cometo some understanding of grace,
which is really what I was missing from my previous
attempts at Christianity was that it doesn't require me being

(01:04:55):
good to forgot to want good things for me.
And I also believe as a counselor that God is giving
those opportunities of grace andmercy to those who do succeed in
taking self deletion route. Believe, I have to believe in
order to persist in my industry that every man and woman is
being given those opportunities to step off of the elevator.

(01:05:17):
And I am attempting to at least point it out to them that this
might be your opportunity to step off of that before it gets
to the place where all hope is lost.
So I think that I've been able to play a part in helping men
reintegrate meaning and purpose into their lives.
I believe that the biblical precedent is a foremost way to
do it. But I also know that when I hold

(01:05:39):
my child at night or when I see the sunset or when I'm sober
minded in approach of those natural law, you know, natural
order creation ways that God chose his hand or that I just
get the neurochemical reward. If you want to be Darwinian, I
just get a neurochemical reward from seeing that particular set.

(01:05:59):
Those are also ways that meaningand purpose are integrated into
the lives of men. I think that we've lost several
generations of men, or at least 10% of several generations of
men, and we're still losing themtoday because of the
hopelessness that persists. And so my words online, while
they may seem harsh, the premiseof my channel, I don't try to be

(01:06:23):
harsh. I actually try to be funny and
nice. But some people might take it
the wrong way. I guess I'm the Charlie Kirk of
this stream. But hopefully, you know, nice as
I can be when telling the truth,but I also believe that the
premise of my channel is to really encourage men because I
read Jordan Peterson's book, youknow, when I was in the midst of

(01:06:43):
a marriage, you know, a grenade that had had been dropped in my
marriage. And when I read his book, I
thought to myself, you know, this is pretty encouraging.
Other men could use this, you know, and even though I've been
a counsellor for quite a while before, then I realized that
like there is a crisis among men, but it's a crisis of

(01:07:04):
encouragement. Like we can run on one
compliment for like 4 1/2 months.
We can run on one affirmation for 5-6 months.
And I don't even need it to be like soft, weak kneed.
I just want, I want my wife to respect me.
I want to give her a good life, but you know one hand on the
shoulder or on the back of my neck can.

(01:07:26):
I've still can remember that formonths and months afterwards
because it is so infrequent and I don't need a lot.
As per most men, I don't need a lot.
I don't need the world to affirmme necessarily, but I do have
concerns for a feelings based generation that's coming into
adulthood that has run largely on affirmation being digital

(01:07:51):
natives and then being devoid ofit at, you know, the 30% of men
that fall categorically into thewrong area.
They just get dumped on and blamed and often times, you
know, touted as being the worst in society and in some ways
hierarchical or patriarchal and and putting people, you know,

(01:08:12):
like oppressing people. Well, I don't know when that
starts, but like I've never gotten to oppress anyone in my
life. Not that I wanted to, but the
man who goes to pick up your garbage at 4:00 in the morning
is not looking to be an oppressive.
Maybe some of them, but most of them want society to run.
And if you turn your lights on and the and the electricity

(01:08:32):
works, you can thank a man for that.
If you drive across a bridge andit's not crumbling to bits, if
you see a beautiful cathedral, that is what happens when men
get a little bit of flowers, verbally or otherwise, they are
able to be and do their best. And I want that for men again, I
want it so badly for them because I see my children will

(01:08:53):
grow up in this right. And if we don't have at least a
reinstitution of agreeableness for one gender sex, one sex out
of the two, then we are going tobe in deep trouble.
Because when men suffer, so doeseveryone else, because you can't
just put one on the outs. So I, I desperately try to
encourage men and I try, obviously, my female clients.

(01:09:17):
I desperately want them to have meaning and purpose.
I the difference is I believe there are some fundamentals give
that into the lives of of those who need it.
And I believe God, children and having a good fundamentally good
life and objectively good life meaning you get to enjoy it.
There are things to enjoy, but you you have work and meaning

(01:09:38):
and purpose. All those things are a
possibility. We have to withdraw from some of
the discourse. But beyond that, men deserve
better than they've gotten and I'm here to give it to him.
But you know, I get a, a lot of,as I'm sure many of us do, a lot
of really nasty. I mean, I, I, you know, all I'm
saying is like men, you know, beencouraged in one way or

(01:09:59):
another. I'm saying that and you wouldn't
believe even from other men, theamount of, of, you know,
discouragement and, and wretchedcomments that you get.
And of course, that's just a small sampling.
But in any case, men deserve theopportunity to live.
And I would die for my family, but truly living for them is the
gold standard. And right now, I, I don't think

(01:10:20):
many men are getting a fair chance, even like I did one
generation ago, to like have a home and raise a family.
So if you're a man out there andyou're struggling and you're
listening to this, if you've made it this far, you're already
in the 1% probably. But if you catch a glimpse of
this, I want you to be encouraged that first of all,
not every woman is probably whatyou think.

(01:10:42):
If you're really in a bad place.My wife is the probably the
Unicorn I guess, but she grew upin a good family.
She has good ethics and good morals.
We all have flaws but she's beautiful and she still chose
me. Well, I chose her really.
But she still said yes. And it is possible to have a
beautiful, chaste, wonderful wife who has an ethic that

(01:11:06):
brings a lot to the table as we talk about the table all the
time nowadays, and is still willing to support you and back
you and be loyal even when things go poorly.
It is not impossible. So if that's what you're after,
being encourage, shake heart, young man.
But more than that, if you get to bring a child into this world
and if you get to make a difference in this world, that

(01:11:28):
is worth persisting for. And this season will be over
before you probably know it. And the more hard that it is
now, the more your reward will be tomorrow if you make it
through. Because the goodwill taste so
much better when you've experienced what's hard.
Yeah, when when this just came up, honestly, I I became
emotionally a little bit flooded.

(01:11:49):
I call it sudsy. No, no, Casey, if you ever use
that term, but you know, like subjective units of distress or
whatever like that scales. And sometimes I ask clients
like, all right, where how sudsyare you?
You seem like you're at an 8 like do some math for me.
Tell me where you are. Anyway, I became a little bit
flooded because this is something that I do relate to
personally and had to give some thought to how I could or, or,

(01:12:12):
or wanted to even respond to it.And part of it is because I see
so much online. I mean, I'm engaged with so many
messages about suicide awareness, about mental health
awareness, you know, and particularly this month and, and
even toward men's mental health.And I find myself thinking whom

(01:12:34):
is this affecting? Is actually benefiting from this
is, is someone in what way? Because I I can't connect those
dots. So that's one of the thoughts
that comes to my head. And the other is trying to draw
some type of correlation, like to draw a common line about why
this is so pervasive, regardlessof the means, whether it is by a

(01:12:57):
classic attempt or it has to do with drugs like Casey talked
about. And as I relate to myself,
what's, what's the common threadthere?
And for me, it's shame. Again, I think this coalesces
with what Casey was saying about, you know, not needing a
parade, you know, until the end of like getting flowers.

(01:13:20):
I think as you, as you put it, there are two things we know
work really, really well for human motivation, right?
Positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.
There is so much negative reinforcement out there for us
as human beings and definitely as men.
And that is not me trying to victimize myself nor any of us.
It's just freaking. You can't play much edited

(01:13:41):
myself properly, but that's a fact, OK?
It just is. There is so much negative
reinforcement out there. There's so many sources of shame
that run deeply, deeply to the core of who we are and whom we
were supposed to be as men. OK, well there's a reason for
people that can't understand thelogic of self deletion.

(01:14:02):
You know, to use that that terminology because it is
something that's difficult to conceive for a normie or, you
know, someone in a stable state of mental health.
It doesn't make any sense. While when you start to factor
in that the core of your purposeand the core of your being is

(01:14:23):
absolutely stripped away and notonly that you're ashamed, you
are you are ashamed to what you are supposed to be.
It results in a self loathing that is transcends hopelessness.
But hope can't even be conceivedof it that been there
personally. I've worked with too many people
who've been there personally. And again, going back to the

(01:14:46):
messaging that we see on social media, which at least in my feed
is ample, I don't know how effective it is.
What I do think is effective arePats on the back.
As Casey put it, our words of affirmation are recognizing
people for their usefulness, fortheir purpose, for their service
to another human being. And I think doing those things

(01:15:07):
yourself is self affirming because the numbers are so
astronomical. It just, it makes you feel
defeated almost to even try and approach it.
You don't know how to tackle it.But that is the best way that I
can personally think of to approach it is that like on a
micro level, I want to validate the efforts and accomplishments

(01:15:28):
of other men and other people that I see doing things that are
worthwhile and that are of service to other people.
And a lot of those opportunitiesare missed right now and think
that has a lot to do with our culture and what it's focused
on. That could go on a whole tangent
about that, but I won't. And I'll just say that in my
personal life and my professional life, I guess I
really try and focus on recognizing those things that

(01:15:50):
are contributing to someone else's self worth where that on
their bat person's self worth. You know, you bring up two
really important pieces of this,right?
So like 1 is our idea of how things are supposed to be.
And we can get to a place where it's like, this isn't how it's
supposed to be. And I see no way to get it to

(01:16:11):
where it's supposed to be. And then the piece of who we're
supposed to be, and I'm not who I'm supposed to be, and I don't
know how to get myself. To who I'm supposed.
To be and it's, it's, you're making a good point that it's
more than just a self-confidencething, because we are in a time
where the, the directions from which expectations are thrust on

(01:16:32):
us are huge. Like there was a time before
technology was where it is, where what you knew a person to
be was based on who you knew, right?
And now we have a thing called influencers.
And so you can get this idea of this is the type of person that
has value, that has purpose. And here are the things that

(01:16:52):
need to be happening for your life to have value and to have
purpose. And if that's not lining up and
what's so hard is it we are justincapable sometimes of seeing
outside of this small bubble andrealizing the world is huge.
There's a a lot of people in theworld that would look at the
things that we're saying are failing and say, man, oh man, I

(01:17:13):
would love to trade lies with you or man, oh man, do you not
see who you are? And so to that second piece,
there's this other element in all of this of the, as I've,
I've heard it termed the epidemic of loneliness, right?
And statistics of how lonely people feel are just, are just,
which is wild because we are more connected than ever, right?

(01:17:33):
But loneliness is so real. And if you don't have people
speaking into your life, speaking truth into your life,
speaking value into your life, then all you're left with is
whatever you're getting from elsewhere and whatever is coming
into your mind. And you know, Scripture talks
not the hardest deceitful above all things like can't even trust
ourselves sometimes. And so again, this is This is

(01:17:55):
why I mean, I think Scripture isvery clear about not just the
value of community, but the essential nature of community.
We were designed to be connected.
But man, put scripture aside, human nature has shown that
throughout human history, peoplehave just kind of realized
community is the way that we're able to thrive.
But we allow ourselves to fall into these spaces of isolation

(01:18:19):
to settle for lesser forms of connection.
And and let's be real, as as fathers, it gets harder when you
have kids because your time should be split to include your
kids should be split to include your spouse should be split to
include responsibilities. Like that pipe's about to burst.

(01:18:40):
I should probably take care of that, right?
Like you are no longer this young single man that just has
no responsibilities. And so, so with that comes a, a
diminished ability to connect. And if your connection points
are also in that space, I've gota group of friends that man, we
love to connect, but it can be so hard to connect between kids,
work spouses. And so that's the hard question

(01:19:02):
to answer you, you know, we talking about the Pats and the
backs and things like that. How can we get better at
cultivating spaces where there can be authentic real connection
And and how can we collectively value those spaces?
Because our church, over the last couple years, we've been
trying to create this regular rhythm that on Sunday morning

(01:19:23):
there is a space where any of the men can come and just know
they can connect. We're going to look at
Scripture. We can pray together, we can do
it at whatever that space needs to be, but the consistency of it
is. Their true.
Value that somebody could come to none of them but that one
Sunday morning that they really need it, they can show up and
and I know there's a whole lot of guys who want that type type
of space, but there's a whole lot of guys who are not taking

(01:19:45):
advantage of that space for legitimate reasons, for just
whatever reasons. And I think as people, I find
those things within me as well, times where I don't, I find
excuses. And so how can we cultivate the
spaces and, and how can we valuethe spaces so that we don't have
to be isolated in a? Yeah, Chris, it's.
A really good boy. Chris, I'm going to kick to you
and then I'm going to wrap us upon this topic and get us into

(01:20:07):
our last little bit of our. OK, because I was going to say
I'm about to. So I got a schedule, 2 hours.
You said I'm cool with it because it's been over an hour
and 30 minutes, but I got to getsome rest.
But no, overall man, it's been good.
I actually really like it today.I like how we just went into the
topics. Overall I'm like meeting y'all
though. See.

(01:20:28):
Hi Jay, already know you Paul. So hey, look, I look forward,
we're going to talk in the chat again.
Hopefully we can keep things going once a month.
I'm cool, but I got to roll out.I get to sleep OK.
Hi, Chris. Thanks for thank you.
Jump shot next. Now I appreciate it.
Peace. We won't for those of you 3
staying, we're not gonna, we're not gonna be going for two too
much longer, but we are gonna have some fun still.

(01:20:49):
So I think, I think for this topic of men's suicide and
talking about this, I think it boils down to some, some things
that we're all saying here, right to where men need, we all
need love, men. Men need a little bit more, bit
more validation, more praise, more affirmation, right?
Because when you feel loved, when you feel valued, when you
feel cared about, right? We're talking about Maslow's

(01:21:11):
hierarchy and needs, right? These are parts of it.
See, I paid attention in collegea little bit, but somehow got my
masters degree in developmental psychology.
But we got there. But no, when we feel those
things, it dramatically increases or dramatically not
increases, decreases the that loneliness that we feel because
we know that we're valued by someone.
We know that we're loved by someone and we have something to

(01:21:33):
live for and we need mess. As men, we have to have value.
We have to have purpose. That's just how our caveman
brain works, right? Going back to Cavemen, we are
must, must feed, must protect, must make fire, must get food
right. And we need to have value.
We need to be adding value to our homes.
Our wives need to appreciate ourvalue, respect our value.

(01:21:56):
And there's a whole that's incredibly biblical as well.
And there's a big role that the wives play in the home and the
husbands play in the hole as well.
But it is so important to make the men in your lives feel loved
and valued and cared for and formen to for you to have something
that you care about. That's something that brings you
joy, brings you value, makes youyou feel like you're valuable to
something, to someone, to a thing, and so that you can

(01:22:19):
continue to contribute. So those are those are my
thoughts and I, I wanted to share a clip that relates to
this. And when it comes to women, This
is why it's so important for women to be a mouthpiece for
men's mental health. So this is going to be kind of
nerdy. OK, Forgive me, but I was
watching, I was watching Monday night raw this last week and AJ
Lee made her return. So it was pretty crazy, but she

(01:22:43):
started a whole for therapy. So I just want to play this.
So a whole arena of grown men because of a woman, and this
isn't saying anything bad against women, but a whole arena
packed full of grown men chantedtherapy, therapy, therapy.
How freaking cool is that? Do you think she meant to do

(01:23:04):
that? Probably not.
That seemed kind of unscripted. That didn't seem like it was a
part of the part of the pipe bomb or part of the promo and
whatnot. It really didn't because she
opened up about her mental health.
She's like, I went to therapy. I did a lot of herself work and
she got jazzed up and got all these men chanting therapy.
So now all these men and everyone who watched that's
probably thinking, well, therapy.
And when athletes do it or wrestlers or athletes, football

(01:23:27):
players, people when they talk about it and they normalize it,
it's like, wow, that's if they're doing it, maybe I can do
it. Maybe that would help me too.
Makes it seem less scary and what not to.
So I just think those things areso important and for the women,
it's so important for the women to also be a positive mouthpiece
during men's mental health months.
It was a catastrophe on social media.

(01:23:47):
There was far too many videos saying when men's mental health
months take a moment, it was like beaten pans and dancing and
shaking ass and all these things.
And it was it was just a mockeryof men's mental health months.
So, but there's also a lot of women that were also very
positively contributing as well.So focus on the positive, like
go with the negative and you know, tell, tell, tell a man in

(01:24:10):
your life, you love them. If you love them that way, hey,
you love them that way too. That's OK.
So regardless, I'm going to moveus on here.
So we're going to close tonight.So we'll be going around the
table. So I wanted to add in a little
something here. I wanted to add in some
opportunities for us to discuss what we would do as parents, as
dads, for some of the dads that may not know what to do in some
of these situations. So this last segment that we're
going to talk up, I call it whatwould you do?

(01:24:33):
Pretty clever. I I think I think it's clever.
So first question here and you guys can answer in any order,
but I do want to hear from from each of you.
Hold on. I have it right here.
I'm also much more prepared tonight.
I don't know how I ended up being more prepared tonight, but
got the kinks out, got the rust off.
So what would you do if your kidloudly repeats something

(01:24:56):
embarrassing you said at home right in front of either your in
laws, their teacher, or at church?
So I have, OK, we were in Christmas Eve service and our
pastors reading from Genesis about the garden and the
initiation of humanity, God's relationship with man.
And they said something about that man and woman were both

(01:25:17):
naked. And my 3 year old who's named
Liberty and very aptly named Liberty, just as it's peace and
quiet, she just yells what like,you know, like naked what?
And everybody is like dying laughing.
And she's the one in the family to do that too.
I don't know, it's, it's hilarious.
But honestly, we don't say anything that they couldn't say

(01:25:41):
in public mostly other than likethey get the, you know, they get
the kid things going on. So I recognize that I shouldn't
be a dad because of all of the misgivings of my behaviour.
So I just enjoy it. And part of the reason we had a
fourth and 5th pregnancy was because I just love having small

(01:26:01):
kids around. I don't know, it's so fun for me
to just enjoy. It is like the sunset for me.
They're so beautiful and hilarious at times.
And honestly, all the tantrums and things that go with it, I'll
take that for the rest of my life.
I would happily have that in my home for the rest of my life if

(01:26:22):
I could keep a young child with me.
So I say bring it on. I could not be more embarrassed
by them than I have already beenembarrassed by myself in any
public setting. So bring the noise.
I love the Thunder. And my wife is very introverted,
so I even like it when they embarrass her.
I, I actually, I just love it now in front of my in laws,

(01:26:45):
though there are some caveats. You know, I don't let them say
everything in front of them, buton the other hand, they know us
better than anyone else on earthprobably.
So I say bring it on. You know, I wouldn't do it on
purpose, but I, I welcome the chaos.
I want toddlers forever, and hopefully I'll have grandkids
who are toddlers at least some point in the, you know, not so

(01:27:09):
distant future. Well, Casey, if they get the
itchy Scratchy, you'll have grandkids.
So that's how you had #4 and five.
So anyways, enough of that. Mike, Paul.
Paul, do you guys want to weigh in on this one?
I'll say real quickly back to something that I think I I
addressed to word Paul or in response to something Paul said
earlier regarding values. Be who, be who you are, own who

(01:27:29):
you are. If I said it in front of my kids
and they're repeating it, I can.I certainly have no ground to
stand on to be upset with them as a child repeating it out and
wherever, whatever arena we're in.
And in Casey's example, I would think it was freaking hilarious.
So that's where I. Normally is.
Yeah, I think that's a really important point.
You know, if are we live in separate lives and if so, at

(01:27:51):
some point that's going to come to light.
And like you said, that's on us to own that.
And when it's kids who like, youknow, they don't know any
better, like, you know, and so, yeah, that's, that's a big piece
of it. But of course, Jay, your your
hypothetical is that something has been said.
And So what comes to my mind is I wanted to ask the question of,
you know, well, what age are we talking about?

(01:28:13):
Because I think the follow up tothat is going to differ
depending on the age. So one piece is what everybody's
already noted, how we deal with that, how we deal with the
embarrassment, how we deal with the ownership.
That's a big piece of it. But my mind goes to what is the
learning opportunity here. And so, you know, with the,
because what we're talking aboutis also the sanctity and privacy

(01:28:35):
of the home, right? Like there are certain things
like what a conversation with a close friend of mine.
I know that conversation probably needs to stay with that
close friend. I can't just go and talk about
it to other people. And so, you know, with a six
year old, you're going to be very base level of, hey, you
know, when when we're communicating with people about
private things, you know, we want to be mindful of that.

(01:28:55):
You get all the way up to 12. You can have a more direct
conversation because they're probably dealing with that too.
In fact, maybe they shared it because somebody shared
something private of theirs. And so I think figuring out how
can this have an extra benefit of equipping kids to understand
how it is we can respect others,how is we can honor others and
how it is we can know not everything needs to be said

(01:29:18):
right. But it comes back to what we
already noted as grown men. Can we be flexible, patient,
understanding enough to not loseour minds when when something is
brought to light that, as we already noted, 1 going to stay
in darkness forever? Probably.
Yeah, that's a good point. It doesn't age and what not our
caveats here and depends on whatwas said.

(01:29:40):
But sure, these things do come up.
I have a funny story that we'll share the last the next.
What would you do here? I don't remember how old she
was. She had to be like my oldest
maybe was like word, I want to say 4, maybe 5.
I don't remember. We were at Target and we were
looking through like birthday cards or something, which had to
be like 5 maybe. Now I'm thinking about it, we're

(01:30:01):
looking for something. We're in the card section and I
like turn around. I was looking for something
else. And she just goes exactly.
She said something along the lines of what The what?
The fudge? And she didn't say fudge.
She said full blown F word. She said what the fuck?
And I'm like, I heard it. And I turned around.
I'm like, what? What?
And she's like, yeah, they don'thave the effing card that I

(01:30:23):
want. There's like this little old
lady right there. Bless her heart.
This looks absolutely mortified from this little girl.
I'm saying those things. And honestly, I'm kind of, I'm
kind of laughing about it and, you know, just taking it on the
chin, taking it for what it whatit is.
And I think that's the best thing you can do is you just got
to kind of take it and just do better from that point forward.

(01:30:48):
So OK, next one. What would you do or yeah, what
would you do? What do you do when your child
is throwing a full blown tantrumor full attitude in the store
because they're not getting something they want?
Screaming, crying, kicking, screaming, all the works.
Crocodile tears, all the above. What do you do when that

(01:31:09):
happens? So again, I think age is a big
factor here, obviously. Are we talking about my 50?
A 15 year old could be whom I don't have by the way, I'm not
that old. Let's just.
Take these in context of the ageof the kids you do have for you
guys. So I would be taking the context
of a four and an 8 year old Casey of your 1000 kids, all of

(01:31:34):
all your kids and then Mike for obviously you have a baby and
another son. So yeah.
And he was to do it. So I'm thinking in that context.
I'm removing I'm I'm removing from the environment is is what
I'm trying to do and would like.My preference would be to try
and stabilize them, you know, from, again, an emotional level.

(01:31:55):
And as ridiculous as that might sound, talking about a four to 8
year old, but eventually it usually does happen to some
extent. They're going to at least calm
down and and get to like what's actually going on and, you know,
like what's acceptable. Yeah, behavior again just kind
of comes back to basic values for me.

(01:32:17):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's hard is we've got
a few things going on here, right?
Like 1 is the actual developmental, you know, there's
something happening. I want to make sure I'm like
navigating this well, raising mychild up well, figuring this
out. And that's one piece.
Second piece is the public piece.
OK, now what are people thinkingabout me?
What are they thinking about my parenting?
And then the third piece is like, as humans are constant

(01:32:39):
power struggles that we get in. And so you know, what it makes
me think of is when I've been full time volunteer ministry
since 2019. And part of that was doing
what's called a discipleship training school, but it was a
family themed discipleship training school and it was five
months. And so we have all these

(01:33:00):
families that are coming together and we're learning how
to seek God on mission as a family, right?
So there's this, there's this built in pressure now of all
these families are seeing each other and, you know, are they
judging each other and all that?But our oldest at the time, man,
something shifted in them cominginto that season.
And the tantrums were like, my gosh, we didn't know what to do

(01:33:23):
because they were new and they were big.
And I'm talking like him storming off, you know?
And so a few. Things that it makes me think of
as one they were doing this parenting class that all the
family and the parents went to and they were playing videos of
this guy named Danny Silk. I don't know if anybody's heard
of Danny Silk and I don't remember all the things, but I
remember there's these he's like, you know, there's these

(01:33:44):
five phrases you can use that'llimmediately de escalate.
And what he was getting at was that there were there is the
power struggle was the core thing.
And Casey, what you just did is what we did.
We're like, Nope, but but, but we were we were shocked because
one, one of the phrases that he said was, you know, when your
kid is like losing it, your default going to want to like

(01:34:07):
respond back and tell him what'swhat and this, that and the
other. And he's like, next time just
try and saying no problem. And we're like, well, but it is
a problem. But but we're like, OK, this
isn't going to work. And we tried it and it worked
because it's suddenly something shifted and we're like, whoa.
Now, I will say he eventually learned about the no problem and
it lost its effectiveness. But what it did revealing us is

(01:34:30):
like, I am not a power hungry person, but you don't have to be
a power hungry person to get in a power struggle because
sometimes it's not that you wantmore power, it's that you don't
want power taken from you. And so that's one thing, like
don't get into battles with yourkids because nobody wins because
it's not a fair fight. They're not trying to be
logical. They're reactive.
Their brains are still developing.

(01:34:51):
So that's one big piece of it isdon't get caught up in the power
struggle. But the other piece that we
learned is we didn't know this at the time, but we had had
theories. There is actually some things
going on that down the road. I mean, six years later we're
officially diagnosed, right? And when we learn these
diagnosis, would you know, thereis actually something it changes
how you engage that something, right?

(01:35:12):
Instead of it being this broad sweep thing that they should
know better, suddenly there are things you're like, oh, actually
they know better. But in this moment, the
chemicals in their brain, they can't actually deal with it.
And when you know there's something like that, when you've
got a name to it, then you are able to address it differently.
So the same kid, I've come to learn expectations are big and

(01:35:33):
when something doesn't go the way that they want, like it's
going to be, it's going to be a huge response, right?
But I've come to learn that eventually it scales back.
The worst thing I can do is to tell them to stop responding
like that or because like they can't, they can't even hear
that. And so there is one thing that
happened that I realized, man, he's going to be really upset.

(01:35:53):
And so I prepared myself and kind of got myself ready this
car ride from school when I, I'mgoing to tell him early on so
that we can deal with this in the car before we get home and
have that 20 minutes for him to like come down from it.
And I was able to put things in place where it was big, but it
didn't explode. And he did eventually come to

(01:36:13):
this place of, of working it through.
And so, you know, that's, I was able to control some of that
environment, but we've had this happen in public spaces.
And the third thing is I've justgot to let go of what people
think. If I like, understand my child,
I'm not trying to get caught up in a power struggle.
All these things at the end of the day, if I'm never going to
be able to make sure everybody understands the full context.

(01:36:36):
So I've just got to take the hit.
Because if I don't take the hit,then I might throw the hit on my
child. I might throw my child under the
bus to protect my own self-image.
And that can be destructive. And so man, what's what's
encouraging for parents to know is when that context has other
parents in it, those parents probably, they've probably been
there, like they probably understand.

(01:36:57):
And if you are responding in a healthy way, they might actually
be impressed. They've seen your kid flip out
and they're like, how is that parent not flipping out?
Oh my gosh, Like, so we're thinking they're judging us.
They're actually like, I want tobe more like that parent.
Shame, resiliency. It's, I mean, I feel like this
has been a, a, you know, a themethroughout this entire episode.
That's really great. I, I think Paul is a counselor

(01:37:19):
in training up there, you know, or maybe in ministry.
You just have to be. You just have to be.
Think my understanding, my wife is an early childhood educator.
My understanding is that like the amygdala firing even if it
seems like a non fight or flightsituation for children who she's
ECE so it's like 4 to 3 to 6 year olds anyway.

(01:37:43):
And I think that they just don'thave logic during those moments.
So knowing that connection usually can help the de
escalation. So if I'm like, am I need to
hold them tightly and that mightbe the best I can do.
And like, sometimes they may thrash a little and things like
that. But there are some
neurochemicals that are releasedwhen kids receive contact like

(01:38:06):
that. And as long as it's not being
like used as a mechanism of control, but it is kind of like,
OK, let's ride this through then.
Usually it may take 5 minutes. And like everyone has said, it's
good to not care what other people think.
But you know, when that 5 minutes is over, you can reach a
more logic. And I understand my children,

(01:38:28):
especially now with my third onegrowing through this phase is
really they want to be heard. And their inability to
communicate what their needs areis a lot of times her
frustrations, like she just can't tell me.
Yeah, it may be simple as they want candy and they're not going
to get it. But you know what else has
really worked? And this is like a preemptive
strike. But depriving your kids of

(01:38:50):
stuff, sometimes it's really important for them to be exposed
to and tolerate what it looks like to go to the store and not
get something. And as a dad that can, excuse
me, be like a, they can speak toa little bit of my feelings of
like desire to provide and everything like that.
Like I want them to be able to get something when they go to
the store. And regardless of whether I can
afford it or not, I still want to because who am I?

(01:39:13):
You know, That's for me though, it's not for them.
And I tell them to. This is something my son has
really picked up on and I'm so grateful for it.
But it doesn't stop him anyway. But the fun is in the getting,
not the having. So like they, the excitement,
the novelty factor is in the, inthe getting.
So once that that threshold has been crossed, it's like it's

(01:39:37):
barely even noteworthy after that.
So I try to train him up and like, buddy, you know, let's
save up for that or whatever it is so that he can then in in his
gaining momentum toward a goal in doing tours or other things
to like work toward that. He actually gets more
neurochemical reward from that. Then he does the getting
especially, you know, you alwaysknow the kid who gets the car

(01:39:59):
that's too nice from a parent who's possibly too rich and
you're like, they're going to wreck it.
They're going to wreck it. I already know it like I smell
it. And it's precisely true.
When you have to pay for something yourself, you value it
higher, even if that payment is like work.
So, you know, I try to deprive my kids.
No, that's really the answer. I deprive my children.

(01:40:23):
From a neurodevelopmental standpoint, I think that makes a
ton of sense. I mean, if you're avoiding the
dopamine dump part of it, which is, you know, that short term
reward or even worse, just like avoidance of the tantrum, yeah,
then I think that's so much wiser.
You know, and you mentioned something about holding your

(01:40:43):
kids tight and it made me think a big piece of this too is US
actually correctly identifying the problem.
Because the gut response to the problem is you don't yell in
public or you don't make a scenein public.
Like that's the problem. And whatever the problem is,
that's what we try to solve. And so if the problem is they're
being loud or making a scene, well, we got to get them out of
there or we got to correct. But what you noted, Casey, is

(01:41:04):
actually, that's not the problem.
That's just the reaction of the problem, which is they're
feeling fear or they're feeling disconnection or they're feeling
whatever these things. And if we as fathers can come to
see that problem rightly, like my child is hurting, well, you
solve that in a very different way, right?
How do I meet my child's need? And so when you mention that

(01:41:24):
about holding them tight, that'swhat I learned about one of my
kids is we've tried to discern what might their love languages
be, what are the ways that they feel loved and connected.
And one of them it physical touch.
And So what I've learned to do is when he is feeling very big
emotions, I've, I've come to ask, Hey, would you like a hug?
Or if I can tell he wants 1, like I might just go in and give

(01:41:45):
it to him and just show him. But like he doesn't know what
I'm doing, but I know I'm like, I am giving him this love that
he needs because that's what he's longing for.
And then sometimes this works more with the little kids.
You're just a fun thing is I, I've learned sometimes it's not
even that they know what's goingon, but there is just like some
there's, they're just having a response that especially little,

(01:42:07):
little kids, sometimes this distraction is a beautiful
thing. And So what I used to do when
they were really, really young is my phone is always out of
storage because it's filled withall their pictures and videos.
But we have some core, like corevideos that we'll come back to.
And I know that sometimes when my kids were little, little,
little and they're having a tantrum, I could just pull up
one of those funny videos and they forget because they

(01:42:28):
weren't. It's just they, they had an
experience, they had an emotional reaction to it, but
then it became about the emotion.
And if for a moment I can bring them out of that emotion, then
they're good. And now as a family that, you
know, that doesn't work as effectively the older they get.
But now it's established this thing where they love reliving
those things. So we'll just sit on the couch

(01:42:49):
and just scroll through these old videos of them ten years
ago, you know them five years ago.
And so it comes back to a cow. Well, do we know our kids?
How well are we trying to learn our kids?
And how willing are we to not just continue to be students of
our kids, but to live out what we have learned about them?
Because the the problem is our kids, we've been called to love

(01:43:12):
them. And the solution is to love
them. No, I love this.
This is this is a great discussion here and I just want
to put in, I think my playbook for this is first, trying to
ignore it, if I can try to ignore it and try not to feed
into the tantrum unless it's full blown.
Second is to try to redirect or make a lesson out of it and you

(01:43:34):
know, try to stick it out. I think it's hard, especially
when there's a when there's siblings and they're always
going everywhere together and you're somewhere, you're at a
grocery store or maybe you're ata Chuck E Cheese or whatever.
The one starts to meltdown and has to ruin the fun for
everybody else. I think that can be really hard.
So kind of just huffing it out at the same time.

(01:43:54):
It's like it's in the playbook for me, distracting, trying to
make fun out of it. When they were little, little
like toddlers. The mimicking works so well.
I have a little 3 year old nieceand every time she starts to cry
and I'm around I'll mimic and she goes and I'm doing it right
in her face right to her and shestarts to laugh and it's

(01:44:16):
objectively hilarious. So I like mimicking.
I think that's fun. I enjoy it.
And then if, if it all else fails and nothing else is
working, I guess I got to removefor a little bit and you know,
go a little, I like to call it black heart moment.
Sometimes you have a little black heart moment.
You got to go to the car, you got to get down real low to

(01:44:37):
their level. You got to get right up in their
face sometimes and really kind of lay it down, lay it down
hard. So I think that's important as
well. That might be a little
communist. I think that's more of Casey's
thing, but well, I'll let them have that one.
But no, I think these are all great things we can do.
I really think trying to figure out that unmet need is a big
part of it as well, like you guys were saying, and making

(01:44:57):
sure we, we understand our kids and we can kind of read them and
try to figure out what that unmet need.
Because at the end of the day, tantrums are a form of
communication, poor communication.
But at the same time, like different ages may not have
better ways to communicate. So understanding like, OK,
they're acting up, they're trying to get a need met.
What is that unmet need I think is incredibly vital.

(01:45:18):
You guys up for one more. You guys want to wrap this up?
Honestly, I'm ready to wrap it up, but.
One more and you guys get a minute to respond to it.
So the last one is the bedtime, the bedtime lawyer, bedtime
lawyer, bedtime negotiator. When our kids are going to bed
and they're refusing to go to bed, they're like, oh, I need
water. I need to use the bathroom.
Oh, I have this deep question about philosophy in the universe

(01:45:38):
and, and God and Jesus and everything in between.
What would you do when you have when you're dealing with the
bedtime negotiator? I mean, one thing that helps is
if you have rhythms that you tryto establish, it can help to
mitigate some of that. Like if bedtimes are just kind
of Wild West whenever, however, then yeah, like there's no
parameter set. But if you can set some

(01:45:58):
expectations around the rhythm and even wisely strategically
head off some of these things, you can cut out a lot of that.
All of it. No, like we still have all that
and the older they get the the request change.
But I think if you if you establish not just a rhythm for
bedtimes, but also a rhythm for how we navigate requests, right?

(01:46:19):
Like find a healthy way that youpractice that with your children
so that they come to understand.Kind of like Casey was saying,
it's not just whenever you go tothe store, if you say you want
something, you get something. But like there is this
established understanding of thegive and take, the expectations,
understanding what it looks liketo receive the no.
I think the more that that's worked in and other areas of
life, then when you get to bedtime where you don't have the

(01:46:40):
energy, they are overtired. So they don't have the capacity.
There could be some muscle memory built in of knowing, OK,
I've asked twice. They said no, I know it's not
going any further. So yeah, how can we establish
these things pre bedtime so thatat bedtime it's a little bit a
little bit easier? I like it.
I would say a big piggyback on Paul rhythm slash structure.

(01:47:02):
If there's an expected, you know, structure, the kid has
developed expectations for them and then positive reinforcement
can be incorporated into that aspart of the expectation.
Where I'm going to follow along with this protocol because I
know that means that I'm going to get my extra book each night.
I'm going to get my third book each night.

(01:47:22):
I'm not going to only get 2 books next night or I'm going to
get this whatever, you know, in the morning.
Incorporating that into it as part of a structure, as part of
a pattern, I think about as good, as good as you can do you
know, in a situation. Like I love there's a book
called the Common Rule by JustinWhitman early that has some

(01:47:43):
really good well habits at the household is his second book.
I I believe he's only written those two.
Maybe there's more now, but someof the bedtime liturgy ways that
he sort of like tries to have some blessing over his kids.
I've really been fond of and tried to adopt as much as we
can, but like, I don't know about you guys, There's not many

(01:48:06):
opportunities where I have a captive audience with my
children. So I really try to take
advantage of the bit. Of course, we try to send them
up to the room at the same time if we can, but I really try to
take advantage of those opportunities to teach because
they are, they know that like this is their last breath of the
day that they get to enjoy. So I get them without any

(01:48:29):
technology, without any distraction.
So that's when I try to drive through the important stuff and
I, this is the stoic in me and in all the best possible ways,
memento Mori. It is very possible that you
might not get another opportunity to speak truth to
them and just ask, you know, theKirk family today how important

(01:48:52):
it is to make sure that your last words or whenever those
happen to be, are abundantly clear and abundantly useful to
your children. And you know, it's kind of the
same premise with your wife. You don't want to go to bed mad.
And while I do struggle with thebedtimes because my kids want it
all sleep in the same room, they're on that themselves, but

(01:49:12):
I get the opportunity to have them for 10 minutes at the end.
And I, I, I try to make it countguys, because I take so little
for granted just based on the fact that if I live like I'm
going to die doing what I'm doing, then I will not live in
regret, regardless of whether that's 50 years from now or, you

(01:49:33):
know, 15 days. So, you know, take advantage of
it because for goodness sake, they're not going to want you in
the room, you know, at bedtime or anywhere near them at bedtime
for very long. It might even be half of the
time you get with them in in your household.
So when you have them captive, you know, say the things that
matter, do and teach the things that matter.

(01:49:55):
And you know, I like to think that a bow on the end of the day
like that helps them know that they're secure and they can
sleep at peacefully knowing thatI've done the best that I could
and I will to protect them and be there when they cry overnight
because it happens or when they fall out of bed, God's sake, or
some other mayhem. You know that I will be there

(01:50:16):
and that is the best I can do. And for as many days as I have
breath, I will not waste that opportunity.
I'll get mad sometimes, but I will.
I will speak love and truth to them because there's no
technology around. There's not even a chance.
They're listening, bro. They're listening.
So that's your chance to like, make it, make it count.

(01:50:37):
Yeah. And I think that's the.
Sweet is a sweet. Yeah, and I, but I think that's
the perfect place to to end us for tonight, boys.
We covered all the things today from Charlie Kirk and to
Philly's Karen, to Casey's amazing impression of the dad,
to men's suicide and to, of course, some practical parenting

(01:50:57):
insights as well. We really covered so much
tonight and I'm so grateful for you guys.
And I think that's the best place to leave it.
In honor of Charlie Kirk and forthe dads that we've lost this
year to suicide, I just want to invite every dad and every
person listen to this mom, dad, uncle, cousin, brother, sister.
Show your love to those, those closest to you, right?

(01:51:18):
Because you never, ever know when the moment's going to be
your last. Show your love.
Hug your little ones extra tighttonight.
Hug your spouse extra tight. Just tell them you love them
before they go to work. You know, give them an extra
kiss. Hug for a couple seconds longer.
You just never know. God forbid any of that happened
to any of you, you guys or any of our listeners listening
tonight. Yeah, just take that and take

(01:51:42):
that for what you will because there's a family mourning, many
families mourning this year 500,000 of them that have lost
their sons to or their sons or daughters to suicide, their
brothers, sisters to suicide, their fathers mothers to suicide
as well. And there's a family, the Kirk
family that is mourning the lossof a young, healthy 31 year old
man, 2 little girls whose lives are changed completely forever.

(01:52:03):
And I just invite again and stress the importance of hug
those that are closest to you when they ask for that extra
hug, that extra tuck in and do it when they ask for that extra
hug or that extra kiss that dropoff in the morning.
And do it when you feel like it's inconvenience to you know,
or you're not as comfortable cuddling your, your significant
other. Do it.
Do the things that you don't want to do.

(01:52:24):
Do those little things because those are what matters.
And those are what they're goingto remember.
And those are what you want yourthose moments to to be that you
remember as well with your lovedones when that day does
inevitably come. So with that, gentlemen, thank
you. If you want to find these
gentlemen on Instagram, you can.You can find Paul at where did
you see God? Casey at rumble dot right dot

(01:52:45):
dad and Mike at Kier vine. And until next time, make sure
you guys do all the things to show your love and support for
the podcast. You can like, follow, subscribe,
do these those things on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter X
all the platforms and just show your support for all of us.
You guys know what to do. You guys listen to podcast.
You guys been here before, so dothe things and until next time,
again, hug your little ones extra tight tonight and we'll be

(01:53:05):
catch you right here at the nextroundtable.

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