The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 2399 - NBA Player RELEASED For Expressing Traditional Christianity

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Folks, here are some things you can do

and still not get waived from your team in the NBA.

You can wield the gun well drunk at a strip club.

You can knock up every woman in a four mile radius

of every NBA stadium.

You can get arrested for alleged felony assault

after concussing and strangling your girlfriend.

What is the one thing you absolutely, positively,

cannot do especially during Holy Week?

I'll explain in a moment.

Welcome back to The Ben Shapiro Show.

All right, so Jaden Ivey, NBA guard at a Purdue.

He used to score about 17 points.

Grab 4.9 rebounds as a sophomore.

He was drafted fifth overall in 2022 by the Detroit Pistons.

He's a good player.

He posted 16 points and five assists and four rebounds

in his rookie year.

And then in his second season, he scored 16 points per game.

And then he was up to almost 18 points per game.

And he got hurt in his third season.

And then he was traded to the Chicago Bulls.

And that is where the trouble began.

So this week, Jaden Ivey posted a video

about the NBA's Pride Month.

This, of course, is the month where the NBA

and pretty much all the NBA teams have nights

dedicated to LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign.

And Jaden Ivey got himself in trouble

because he posted on Instagram a video

talking about NBA's Pride Month.

He is a converted, newly religious Christian.

They proclaim Pride Month and the NBA.

They proclaim it.

They show it to the world.

They say, come, come, come join us for Pride.

For Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness.

They proclaim it.

And so that seems like fairly traditional Christian belief

right there that you should not actually celebrate Pride

in what is considered a sin

by the vast majority of the religious world.

Well, immediate response of the Chicago Bulls

was to can him and announced that they had waved him

due to conduct detrimental to the team.

Apparently, it was very, very bad for the team

that he put out an Instagram video

proclaiming the same thing that churches

all over the country say all the time.

The Chicago Bulls had coach Billy Donovan

was asked about all of this.

It was suggested that Ivey seems to be spiraling.

Now, Ivey has reported depression in the past.

It is unclear whether he is in the midst

of some sort of mental issue or not.

But if you're gonna cite evidence of a mental issue,

this is not the best evidence.

And him just saying traditional religious belief

that you shouldn't celebrate Pride in what is considered a sin,

that is not a spiral.

Here is the Bulls head coach trying to explain.

I know some of the things that we've put out there.

I think it's a situation for him

where it's on his own personal Instagram.

I don't wanna get into what he put out there,

but certainly I hope for him, he's okay.

I don't know, I've had conversations with Jay

and stuff and he's been always about

we have his needs trying to work what we want to play.

But I think organization made a certain stand

as I think we wanna have as a organization

trying to move up to the organization of the day.

And so again, not a ringing rebuke there from the coach.

Nonetheless, the Bulls let him go

because of course you cannot say anything

that violates the precept of full scale

wokeness on these sorts of issues.

So Jayden, I've even went to Instagram live

to defend himself, who's the airport.

They said my conduct is detrimental to the team, right?

Why don't they just say we don't agree with his stance

on LGBTQ?

Why don't they say that?

Well, how is it conduct detrimental to the team?

What did I do to the team?

What did I do to the players?

I did nothing but practice with them, play with them,

pass the ball to them, good teammate to them,

say good job, good shot.

I said, good job, good job, good pass.

Wait a play, bro, right?

I said these things to my teammates,

was never detrimental to them.

So why is it that the NBA and the Chicago Bulls

say that I'm detrimental to the team?

How?

Because I believe in the truth?

Because I know Jesus is the way the truth in the life.

I mean, again, he has a point.

The team could have just said,

we disagree with his comments,

everyone is entitled to their opinion.

By the way, in the UFC, this happens all the time.

And Tana White routinely says this

about people that he disagrees with in UFC,

who say things that are actually quite morally bad.

And he will say, you know, you're allowed to say

what you want to say.

I disagree with it, but it's not my job

to sort of police the speech of other people.

But the Bulls just cut Ivy, just waved him,

which is kind of incredible.

Ivy also went off on Steph Curry.

And the reason he's going off on Steph Curry

is because Steph Curry is frequently brought up

by critics of traditional Christianity

and the league apparently as sort of the example

of what Christianity should look like,

meaning that you sort of cite the vagus

versus from the Bible while ignoring

actual sort of traditional moral practice.

And here is Ivy talking about Steph Curry.

That's why you got Steph Curry.

And he not even surrendered.

And y'all believe he's a Christian.

Y'all believe he's a Christian

because he wrote Philippians 413.

Y'all think he's a Christian.

But he curts him just like the world.

Fresher with the world is Emmett's evil guy.

He's fresher with the world.

He don't know Jesus.

And I pray he comes to the truth.

That him and his family would be saved in Jesus name

because all that stuff is not gonna matter

on judgment day, all the rings he got.

Now again, I'm just wondering precisely

what Ivy said here that merits being waved.

I mean, let's be real about this.

If you were saying the opposite,

that Pride night is the best.

In fact, if he came out as gay today,

he would be celebrated by the league.

He'd be touted as one of the most important basketball players

alive if that happened.

The NBA has a political men without doubt.

And they are putting at risk

an entire Christian audience and traditionalist audience

that look at this and say, hold up.

You get waved for saying that you don't believe

that Pride night ought to be celebrated.

Notting because you didn't anything wrong.

Just because you said that you don't agree

with the league stands on these issues.

Back in January, 2025,

Ivy talked about how he had become a Christian.

He sort of explained the story.

And again, here he was giving his testimony.

My testimony is that, you know,

when you're away from Jesus, when you're not,

when you're not close to him,

when you're in a relationship with him,

you're gonna like Satan is there.

He wants to just still kill and destroy it.

That's all he comes here to do.

He doesn't want to give you peace.

He wants to make your life better.

And that's what I dealt with, you know, most of my life.

And when I came in, I know Jesus, my life,

my life did a whole 360.

And I have that peace, I have that joy

and that I've been searching for in my entire life.

Now again, recall that the NBA had to have an entire controversy

and gulf it surrounding whether they should have a night

honoring a strip club in Atlanta.

Remember this.

And that required the NBA to actually step in

after weeks of consternation about whether or not

that should happen.

But apparently the minute you sound off

and you say, hey, Pride night, it's got,

it's got some connotations that are anti-Christian.

The minute you say that, gone.

That's an insane tactic from a league

that wants to maximize its fan base, not minimize it.

And again, during holy week for Christians,

it's a kind of astonishing stance by the league.

I'm hopeful that some other team will give Jaden Ivy another chance

because, man, the Chicago Bulls really screwed up here

in a major, major way.

And just a second, we'll get to a domestic terror attack.

As we now know that it was a not only a terror attack,

but a foreign driven terror attack.

And we'll get to the latest on the war in Iran.

Plus, Bishop Barron will stop by to talk about the pope

and about holy week first.

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This breaking news, by the way,

is brought to you by the International Fellowship of Christians

and Jews visit Ben4theFellowship.org.

So speaking of breaking news, yes, there are, in fact,

internationally driven terrorists who are living among us.

They're living in the United States.

They're ready to commit acts of violence against Americans.

There's no information that is now emerging

about a terrorist named Iman Khasali.

That would be the radical Muslim

who attacked the Temple Israel

in West Bloomfield, Michigan on March 12th.

So according to six ABC, apparently,

a Zawali 41 of Dearborn Heights sat in the parking lot

for a few hours on March 12th,

before smashing his pickup through closed doors

and into the hallway of an early childhood education area

striking a security guard.

And then he exchanged gunfire with another guard

and then he shot himself.

That's what the FBI said at the time.

That Ford F-150 was stocked with commercial grade fireworks

and jugs of gasoline and of course,

it caught fire during the confrontation.

Well, here is the FBI's Jennifer Runyon,

the head of the Detroit Bureau,

describing the video that Khasali left

before the attack in which he basically acknowledges full scale

that he is a member of Khisbalah

or at least an adjunct member of Khisbalah.

There's approximately 10 minutes before the attack.

He sends his sister to final videos.

In Arabic, he records himself saying with this screenshot,

this is the largest gathering of Israelis

in the state of Michigan in the United States.

I have buoy trapped the car.

I will forcibly enter and start shooting them.

God willing, I will kill as many of them as I possibly can.

He sends a quick three second video

with the same screenshot shortly after

and types the message a special operation.

Now again, we know that his siblings in Lebanon

were in fact members of Khisbalah.

Remember the entire media on the left

and some people on the horsey right reported

that he was only doing this because his family

had somehow been victimized in Lebanon.

His family were literal members of a terrorist group.

James Gorgon, the US Attorney for the Eastern District

of Michigan, he says, listen,

this was not some guy who was self-radicalized

or something, he was a Khisbalah agent.

Do not be misled.

This terrorist acted on the half of Hezbalah

and he intended to kill others, not just himself.

He could have done that in a garage or in his basement.

He did not need to plan for days, arm himself

and try to take dozens of Jewish American children with him.

His death was just a means or a tool

to kill as many Jews as he could.

That's why his last statements were that

he was on a special operation

to kill as many of them as he possibly can.

As Gorgon expressed, it's not that Khisbalah

was some sort of lone wolf

that he was just reading stuff on the internet.

He was an actual adjunct member of Khisbalah

and Khisbalah is an Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group

that has been targeting Israel for destruction,

for literally decades that are also responsible

for the murder of hundreds of Americans

factoring Beirut Barak's bombing in the early 1980s.

Tera's Gorgon saying that Khisbalah was not in fact a lone wolf.

He was a terrorist living on American soil

and we allowed him to enter.

I've seen some odd attempts to explain away

or even lessen this terrorist attack by claiming

that he was an isolated lone wolf,

but that is misleading.

Tera's propaganda is designed to activate

the so-called lone wolf to act on behalf

of the terrorist organization.

And it makes no legal difference.

If the current leader of Khisbalah himself,

Naim Qassem called this man

and told him to attack Temple Israel

or whether he simply heated Khisbalah's call

to kill Jews and in his words, burn their world.

Again, this is exactly right.

We need fewer people immigrating to America who are terrorists.

I know this may be controversial to some,

but I don't know.

I feel like that one is pretty common senseical.

We also could use fewer elected officials

who agree with actual honest to God terrorists.

So this person, this terrorist came from Dearborn, Michigan.

Michigan, of course, is a very, very large radical Muslim population.

One of those radical Muslims is a man named Abdul El Sayed.

He is a candidate in Michigan.

And according to the Washington Free Beacon,

he said, they've discovered audio of him,

saying that he needed to stay silent

about the killing of Ali Khamenei,

who would be the leader of the Iranian regime.

He literally told staffers,

he didn't want to say anything about it at all

because there were too many people in Dearborn

who were sad about it.

In fact, here is the audio of Abdul El Sayed,

admitting full scale that Dearborn, again,

this is a major city in the United States,

is distraught over the killing

of the leader of a terrorist regime,

responsible for the death of hundreds

of not thousands of Americans over the last 47 years.

And this guy is running for Senate.

Here he was.

I also want to remind you guys

that there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today.

So like, I just don't want to comment on Khamenei at all.

Like, I don't think it's worth even touching that.

Like, they're gonna try, this is what we practice,

but like, is it easy to find many of bad guys?

Make right that he's dead.

Well, my first man was 86 years old,

who's gonna be dead sometimes soon anyway.

Second, that doesn't justify,

the fact that he was a bad man

does not justify our breaking of international law

and unilateral action outside of, outside of war zone.

Like, this is a bigger question

about the United States responsibility to international law

and we have been breaking it once

and this is the second leader that we've gone after

in the matter of month.

We are not the world's policeman

and that's not what he got elected to do with it.

Okay, but again, the key there is him saying

that people in Dearborn are sad.

Who the hell do you want in America

who is literally sad over Khamenei's death?

Like, truly sad over the killing of this terror master

and murderer.

And then, again, this tape is pretty astonishing

and kudos to the free beacon for uncovering it.

Abdul Al Sayed, who again, is likely to be the Senate nominee

in Michigan for the Democrats.

He says that if somebody brings up Khamenei

or if somebody brought up the sadness in Dearborn

over Khamenei, that he would just misdirect over to pedophilia

and claim that President Trump is a pedophile, basically.

Understand the op.

Understand the op and the grievance party,

meaning people from Abdul Al Sayed to the Tucker Carlson right

who all link hands in this sort of stuff.

They are using exactly the same tactics

and those tactics, by the way,

are being promoted by Iran directly.

You have literally the foreign minister of Iran

who is doing what Abdul Al Sayed is doing,

saying that the United States is violating international law

and by the way, Epstein, it is an op,

meaning it is not a normal thing that normal people do.

It is being driven top down by engagement horrors

and by actual dedicated anti-Americans,

many of whom are inside America's borders.

Here's, again, this guy is going to likely be

the Michigan Senate Democrat candidate, insane.

They are going to go super hard on trying to get you

to sympathize with the regime.

Like that's what the conservatives

and even some of our moderate enemies

are going to try to get you to do.

And I can say, I've got no love lost

for the eyes of what's made me just like,

I've got no love lost for Donald Trump's best friend,

who had been said, no, I don't have no love lost for anything.

You know what I say about people back home in Michigan

who still struggle to afford their groceries

and their housing, those problems are bigger than Donald Trump

and he's unwilling to actually address them.

And I'm just gonna go straight up and feel it, frankly.

I just would be like, I'm President,

I've decided that he doesn't like to front page Jews.

So he decides to take us into another war.

There wasn't time when you all were talking about America first.

This seems to be, to be America last.

Amazing, amazing.

Now, El Sayed is currently engaged

as we say in a highly contested Senate primary.

He is campaigning with sleazy limousine communist Hassan Piker.

So according to the New York Times,

Abdul El Sayed is meeting with Piker

and doing a rally with Piker.

While Piker's huge young following

has made him an appealing ally for progressive Democrats,

some have called Mr. Piker, the Joe Rogan of the left.

And people have pointed out that Hassan Piker

is an insane radical who says the United States

deserves 9.11, supports a wide variety of communist

dictatorships, a wide variety of Islamic terror groups.

The New York Times asked him about all of this

and he responded, why is it only now

that people are getting very frustrated by it?

I assume it's because there's a power center in the party

that is worried about losing its grip,

losing its relevancy.

Well, I mean, listen, if Democrats want to keep embracing

the radicalism in the stupid,

and yes, the anti-Semitism, because Hassan Piker,

all he does, he does a stupid game.

His stupid game is, he means to say Jew

and he just says Zionist, that's all, that's his game.

In any case, podcaster Jonah Platt,

he pointed this out on CNN and he is not wrong.

What Piker does that a lot of people of his ilk do

is they try to inoculate themselves against claims

of Jew hatred by pointing it out in places that aren't them.

He's been very clear pointing things out on the right

of that anti-Semitism.

These are the tropes they use and then he'll use

the exact same tropes and just sub Jew for Israel.

Yeah, that happens to be correct.

That happens to be correct.

Well, coming up, we'll get to the latest in Iran,

what's happening over there, plus Cuba,

plus Bishop Aaron and Arthur Brooks are stopping by.

So, lot going on today.

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Okay, so back to the Middle East.

Where do things stand right now?

Well, according to channel 14 in Israel,

they've now obtained an exchange between

the Iranian President Mahmoud Pzeşkin

and the IRGC's Ahmed Vahidi.

Pzeşkin would be the quote unquote moderate

in the scenario.

And Vahidi, of course, is a radical.

He's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Those are the quote unquote hardliners.

So Pzeşkin apparently said quote,

I want to be involved in the negotiations with the US

without a quick deal our entire economy will collapse

in three weeks.

So first of all, that is accurate.

They do not have an economy.

This is the great worry of the Iranians right now.

Right now, they're still being allowed to move oil out of Iran

to the tune of a couple of million barrels of oil per day.

If that stops, their economy does not exist.

It does not exist.

The IRGC chief Vahidi, he said,

that's exactly why you can't be involved.

You'll give up everything for a deal,

which shows you where the IRGC is.

Apparently, according to Channel 14 in Israel,

after the call ended, the report says the Iranian president

told his companions he feels like a hostage quote,

I'm unable to resign.

I can't make my own decisions.

All I can do is read from a script I'm given.

Yeah, fair.

So where are the American people right now?

Well, if you watch again, all the online traffic,

the American people are desperately upset

about what's going on.

Well, not so much actually.

Brand new Harvard Harris poll.

It shows 51% support for the airstrikes in Iran.

In fact, it shows, according to this polling data,

do you think it is in the US's interests or not

to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon?

74% yes, including 69% of independence.

Is it important to restrain the global influence

of China and Russia?

66% yes, including 63% of independence.

Again, these are not numbers that suggest

that the American people are desperate,

desperate to stop this right now.

Three quarters of all voters, according to this poll,

say that winning at the war is important.

And also that the United States is, in fact, winning.

Two thirds agree that Iran is the leading source

of instability, terrorism,

and that the Iranians do not support the Iatolans.

67% of people believe, again,

that Iran is the big source of instability

and terrorism in the region.

So, this begs the question,

why is President Trump lagging in the polls?

Because his approval ratings are down.

I mean, the answer really is because of the economy as always.

Right now, a lot of this Pepsi about the economy.

And because of the war, the stock market is down

and gas prices are up.

46% of Americans, according to the same poll,

think inflation is the most salient issue.

53% say the economy is worse than it was under Joe Biden.

Now, again, we keep hearing that

MAGA Republicans are abandoning President Trump.

That's actually not true.

What is happening is that Democrats and independents

who jumped on the Trump bandwagon,

largely because they didn't like Kamala Harris.

Some of those people are dropping off.

Kristen Saltis Anderson is an excellent pollster

right in the New York Times.

She says, my polling shows MAGA thinks Trump got it right

when it comes to Iran.

When I separate Republican respondents

on whether they think of themselves as a Trump supporter

or a Republican party supporter first,

I find more than nine in 10 Trump first Republicans

support the Iran strikes,

compared with 72% of party first Republicans.

So in other words, the Republican party is on board

and it is a fringe of the Republican party or not.

Why?

Well, because they are more aligned, frankly,

with sort of dispossessed Democrats.

Again, these are the people who are upset with Trump.

And this is why when you see columnists suggesting

that like Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughan defines MAGA,

kind of like saying the Kerry Prishan defines Catholicism.

The late breaking decider who jumps on a bandwagon

to effectuate his or her own values,

rather than you know, joining in order to facilitate

the values of the central institutions,

those are typically not the people who define the institution.

Because here is the thing.

President Trump has been talking about all of this forever.

Forever, we've played this clip before,

but yesterday Trump truth it out himself.

This is from 1987 talking about taking Iran's oil.

Why couldn't we go in and take over some of their oil,

which is along the sea?

How would you do that?

Would you send in the Marines?

Would you take a chance in a war?

Let them have Iran.

You take their oil.

That's what I'm talking about.

How?

I mean, do we want a war?

What do we do when you take their oil?

You go in.

How do we go in?

You're going to have a war by being weak.

Okay, how do we go in?

What do we do?

Excuse me.

You're going to have a war.

And it's going to start in the Middle East.

What if the Soviet Union said you do this to Iran?

We're going to come in.

I don't believe they'd do it.

The next time Iran attacks this country,

go in and grab one of their big oil installations.

And I mean grab it and keep it and get back your losses

because this country has lost plenty because of Iran.

That is a very young Donald Trump saying the exact same thing

he says today and he is correct.

He is correct about that.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,

is explaining the state of play

and what exactly are our objectives in Iran.

I hear a lot of talk about,

we don't know what the clear objectives are.

Here they are, you should write them down.

Number one, the destruction of their Air Force.

Number two, the destruction of their Navy.

Number three, the severe diminishing

of their missile launching capability.

And number four, the destruction of their factory.

So they can't make more missiles and more drones

to threaten us in the future.

All of this so that they can never hide behind it

to acquire a nuclear weapon.

That was our objective from the beginning.

That remains our objective now.

We are on pace.

And in fact, ahead of schedule on some of those things.

And we are going to achieve those things

in a number of weeks, not in a number of months.

Now, what about the straight of hormones?

The Secretary of State talked with Al Jazeera,

which again, man, what a waste Al Jazeera is.

He talked about what will happen at the straight.

When this operation is over, it will be open

and it'll be open one way or another.

It will be open because Iran agrees

to abide by international law

and not block a commercial waterway

or a coalition of nations from around the world

and the region with the participation of the United States

will make sure that it's open.

Okay, so we'll get more into that in a moment.

First, Rubio says, he's asked about negotiations.

He says, listen, we're negotiating,

but we're not going to tell you who we're negotiating with.

Cause again, as we have seen,

a lot of different opinions inside the Iranian government

right now as their entire economy is in a state of collapse.

Who is this new and more reasonable regime

is the United States is in direct contact with them?

Well, I'm not going to disclose to you

who those people are because it probably would get them

in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran.

Look, there's some fractures going on there internally.

And at the end of the day,

I think that if there are people in Iran who now

given everything that's happened are willing

to move in a different direction for their country,

that would be great.

And now again, maybe negotiations are happening,

maybe they're not happening,

but the bottom line is the president is still engaged

in a very high level of strategic ambiguity, right?

He doesn't want our enemies to know exactly what we are doing.

Yesterday, he posted a video of an explosion in Isfahan.

This explosion is astonishing.

It is almost certainly the destruction

of a major missile facility underground.

I mean, look at this.

Look at that secondary explosion.

The secondary explosion is where you hit a target.

And then there is another explosion

where a bunch of stuff blows up.

And so what you see in the movies, right,

where a car blows up and then the entire building blows up

because there was a bunch of flammable in it.

Well, that's that in Isfahan, my goodness.

Or reports are now suggesting that perhaps president Trump

would be willing to end the war without actually opening

the straight of hormones and instead just leave it

to the Europeans according to the Wall Street Journal.

President Trump told AIDS he's willing

to end the US military campaign against Iran,

even if the straight remains largely closed,

according to administration officials,

likely extending Tehran's firm grip on the waterway

and leaving a complex operation to reopen it

for a later date.

In recent days, according to the journal,

Trump and his AIDS assessed a mission to pry open the choke point

would push the conflict beyond his timeline

of four to six weeks.

He decided that the United States should achieve its main goals

of hobbling Iran's navy and missile stocks,

wind down current hostilities

and pressure Tehran diplomatically.

And if that failed, then Washington would press allies

in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening

the straight.

President Trump did put out a statement on truth social yesterday

telling the Europeans, hey, you know,

if you don't like what's going on,

maybe you should go get your own oil, quote,

all of those countries that can't get jet fuel

because of the straight of hormones like the UK,

which refused to get involved

in the decapitation of Iran.

I have a suggestion for you.

Number one, buy from the US, we have plenty.

Number two, build up some delayed courage,

go to the straight and just take it.

You have to start learning how to fight for yourself.

USA won't be there to help you anymore,

just like you weren't there for us.

Iran has been essentially decimated,

the hard part is done, go get your own oil.

Now again, unprinciple, he's not wrong,

but the reality is that's unlikely to happen.

The president knows that the straight of hormones

if left in Iranian control would allow

for the Iranian government to rebuild and strengthen.

And let's be real about this, the horrors of Europe,

meaning the leadership class over there

would basically just try to bribe the Iranians.

Hell, they might build them a nuclear facility

just to allow the oil to move through.

These are the same Europeans who are happy to use Russian oil

while simultaneously claiming the United States

ought to defend Ukraine.

So what is the most likely scenario here?

Probably major action to reopen the straight,

to grab Harga Island, to throttle the Iranian regime

by cutting off its lifelines to the global economy.

Because again, let's be real, the Iranian economy

is non-existent.

And if the oil flow goes away, they can't pay their boys.

All of their IRGC and besieged friends

are gonna go without paychecks.

Now, Stephen Moore points out,

he changed over there as not a long-term prospect.

It is a short-term prospect here,

Stephen Moore yesterday on Fox Business.

Let the market work here.

As soon as we get the straights open,

I'm gonna predict on your show

we're headed right back down to $50 a barrel.

Dan Bruella may not agree with me on that,

but I think the world is a wash and oil.

This is a very temporary situation.

And the only last thing I'll say is, look,

I'm in favor of US controlling the Venezuela

and the Iran oil.

But let's give the money to the citizens of Iran.

Let's give the money to the Venezuelans

so that they have a future.

Now, the president is suggesting

that as far as the cost that we have incurred,

our Arab allies will help defray that cost.

Because again, he's not wrong.

And the idea that we ought to actually get something

from the Arab Gulf nations who have not yet dropped

a single offensive bomb, make some sense.

Senator's Caroline Levin at the White House yesterday.

Who's paying for the cost of this war,

will those Arab countries step up to do just that?

Well, I think it's something the president

would be quite interested in calling them to do.

I won't get ahead of him on that,

but certainly it's an idea that I know that he has

and something that I think you'll hear more from him on.

Well, President Trump, again,

is writing all potential tactics in the arts.

And only he put out a statement on truth

social yesterday, he said the United States

is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime

to end military operations in Iran.

Great progress has been made.

But if for any reason, a deal is not shortly reached,

which will probably will be,

if the Hormuz straight is not immediately open for business,

we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran

by blowing up and completely obliterating

all of their electric generating plans,

oil wells, and Harg Island,

and possibly all these salinization plans,

which we have purposefully not yet touched.

Now, of course, this is making all the members

of the legacy media very, very, very dyspeptic.

They're very upset.

And this is something that really,

just in my view,

that the country is most likely to make some heartburn.

The report from NBC said why is Trump threatening

a potential war crime?

President posted this morning about, you know,

his threat that on leaving Iran,

he said we might blow it up and completely obliterating

all of their electric generating plans,

oil wells, Harg Island,

and possibly all the salinization plans,

under international law, striking civilian

and for structural like that is generally prohibited.

Why is the President threatening

a war crime with the U.S. military, and how do you squirted that with the administration

repeatedly saying that the U.S. does not target civilians?

Look, the president has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time

as evidenced by the statement that you just read that their best move is to make a deal.

Or else the United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination

and the president is not afraid to use that.

Again, they keep saying war crime, war crime, here's the thing.

It is not explicitly unlawful or automatically a war crime to attack an enemy's electrical

grid.

According to John Spencer, the executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute, meaning

it can be, but it isn't just by definition.

Under the law of armed conflict, such targets can be lawful if they provide a military

advantage and every single strike has to be adjudicated under proportionality, distinction,

and precaution.

So what do those things mean?

Well, distinction means that the target has to be a military objective, not directed

predominantly at civilians.

But again, it is not in the interest of the administration to target the civilian population

of Iran, which we correctly believe to be on our side.

Propersonality means that the expected damage can't be excessive in relation to concrete

and direct military advantage anticipated.

So in other words, you're not allowed to blow up an entire city block in order to take

out one terrorist in general.

And finally, precaution includes ensuring that civilian casualties actually be minimized.

So it's not clear whether this would violate any of those prescriptions.

The bottom line here is that the Iranians are living on borrowed time.

And as always, and forever, all they can rely upon is people to undermine the war effort

and make President Trump stop short.

That is all they can rely upon.

All right.

In just a second, we're going to get to the situation in Cuba where we're actually allowing

oil to flow into Cuba.

Not sure what's going on there.

Plus, we'll talk about some comments by the Pope about the war, Bishop Barron.

We'll stop by Isabel Brown versus the mute.

A ton is coming up on today's show first.

Passover is almost here, a sacred time to remember God's deliverance this year.

Many in Israel are going to mark the holiday under the shadow of war.

Obviously, I'm talking to a lot of my friends in Israel.

They're literally setting up their satire in bomb shelters right now.

This is why the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is on the ground right

now delivering food, equipping shelters, caring for Israel's most vulnerable.

I have CJ's doing great work for vulnerable people on the ground, people have been living

in a state of war for a couple of years at this point.

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Now again, Marco Rubio, he is pointing out that the people of Iran are incredible.

Again, the goal is not to harm the people of Iran.

The people of Iran are incredible people.

The people who lead them, these, this clerical regime, that is the problem.

And if there are new people now in charge who have a more reasonable vision of the future,

that would be good news for us, for them, for the entire world.

But we also have to be prepared for the possibility, maybe even the probability that that is not

the case.

Hey, so we'll have to see what happens, suffices to say, I do not think that the president

is going to give up the ghost right now, not while he has the Iranians on the ropes,

contrary to all the legacy media trash coverage.

Now meanwhile, when it comes to Cuba, the Cuban regime is also on its last legs, deprived

of Venezuela and oil, they're basically just bleeding along.

That's all that's happening here.

Well, according to, again, the New York Times reporting on all of this, the United States

Coast Guard is allowing a Russian tanker full of crude oil to reach Cuba, delivering

a critical supply of energy to the island nation after months of an effective oil blockade

by the Trump administration, according to Ghost Official, briefed on the matter.

Well, that is weird that we would let the Russian ship through for sure, that is definitely

a strange move by the Trump administration.

Basically President Trump is saying, you know what?

It's temporary.

We don't want people to starve and let's be real about it.

The real answer is that we need to finish one thing before we get involved in another.

Here is the president yesterday.

There's a report that the US is going to let a Russian oil tanker go to Cuba.

Is that true?

We have a tanker out there.

We don't mind having somebody get a boatload because they need, they have to survive.

It would bother.

That report is true as far as you know.

Well, I would say, I told them, if a country wants to send some oil into Cuba right now,

I have no problem with it.

Do you worry that that's all you've got to do?

Whether it's Russia or not, what?

Do you worry that that helps?

I don't know.

Does that help him?

I do.

He loses one boatload of oil.

That's all it is.

It's fine.

Okay.

Again, I think the real thing here is that initiating some sort of full-scale blockade

on Cuba in the middle of the conflict in the Middle East is probably a distraction.

And as the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio says, isn't Cuba's been having blackouts all

of last year?

They're having blackouts the year before.

This is not going to alleviate much.

Cuba's been having blackouts all of last year, all the year before.

There isn't a naval blockade around Cuba.

The reason why Cuba doesn't have oil and fuel is because they want it for free.

And people don't give away oil and fuel for free on a regular basis, unless it was the

Soviet Union subsidizing them or the Bureau of subsidizing them and just go and do it.

Well, meanwhile, more on the international front.

Yesterday, Pope Leo gave a poem Sunday homily in which he made some comments about war.

It seemed to be a veiled reference to the United States' war in Iran, although he was

I'd say somewhat unclear about what exactly he was saying.

Here is some tape of the Pope.

He did not arm himself or defend himself or fight any war with Jesus.

He revealed the gentle face of God who always rejects violence.

Rather than saving himself, he allowed himself to be nailed to the cross, embracing every

crossborn in every time and place.

Throughout human history, brothers and sisters, this is our God, Jesus, King of Peace, who

rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.

He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying, even

though you make many prayers, I will not listen to your hands, our full of blood.

It's too enough to continue to play the rest of the statement in, I believe that's an Italian

or Latin.

My languages are not particularly good here.

It's definitely a strange statement, and I gotta be honest, I'm not sure what the Pope

means by this.

Obviously, the notion that God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, I assume

here that he's talking about unjust war because otherwise it makes no sense.

I mean, otherwise, there's some problems just historically and also textually here.

Obviously, the Old Testament is filled with figures who both prayed to God and went to

war, Moses, Joshua, Barack and Nebra, Gideon, Samuel, King David who wrote entire

Psalms to God while at war, Hezekiah.

And there are lots of popes who turns out historically who have initiated full-scale crusades

or bless them.

For example, Pope Urban II who initiated the first crusade with these

words, quote, this land or Savior made illustrious by his birth beautiful with his life and

sacred with his suffering who redeemed it with his death and glorified it with his tomb.

This royal city is now held captive by her enemies and made pagan by those who know

not God.

She asks in longs to be liberated.

And an incomplete list of other popes who bless crusades or other forms of war, that

would include obviously everyone from Euccinius III to Gregory VIII to Innocent III to Boniface

II IX to Nicholas V to Clement V.

So I mean, again, this is why I don't think that the Pope means what people think he means

there.

I would assume that he means unjust war, not all war because otherwise we sort of have

to ignore the entirety of the Old Testament and pretty much all of Catholic history.

And just to clarify that, I did talk to my friend Matt Fratt of Pines with Aquinas who

knows way more about this than I do in terms of Catholic doctrine.

And he pointed me to the works of both Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas who points out when

war is justified.

So again, if Pope Leo wants to make the case that the war in Iran is unjustifiable, he

should make that case.

I'm not a fan in general of when leaders use inartful and broad language that can be deliberately

misinterpreted by members of the legacy media joining me online to discuss this, the rest

of current events.

And of course, it's holy week.

Is Bishop Robert Barron.

He of course is the bishop of the diocese of Lunonal Rochester and is one of the most

prominent Catholic voices in modern media.

And he of course is the head of word on fire Catholic ministries.

Bishop Barron, thanks so much for taking the time.

I really appreciate it.

Ben, good to see you as always.

So let's do some news of the day and then we'll talk about holy week more broadly.

So obviously made a lot of headlines yesterday or the day before when the Pope made this

statement.

A lot of people interpreted that as a slap at the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth or

a slap at the president of the United States.

How should people interpret that?

Again, my own take is that he's using language that I think is inartfully broad there because

I assume he's talking about unjust war, otherwise he'd be in conflict with from my understanding

and from my Catholic friends, Catholic doctrine itself.

No, I think that's the right distinction that one you made.

And of course, you know, Pope Leo is an Augustinian.

So he's, he's shaped by the Augustinian intellectual and spiritual tradition.

And it was Augustin, as you suggest, who was the first major figure in Christianity

to give us a just war theory.

Now mind you, Augustin was very strong on peace.

And that the God revealed in Jesus Christ crucified is a God of peace and nonviolence.

Augustin held to that.

He held to a critique of Rome that was predicated upon the constant use of violence.

So Augustin is no war monger.

But he also recognized in a finite, fallen, conflictual world, sometimes the only way to oppose

deep injustice is through the violence of warfare.

And then he gave us these criteria, Thomas Aquinas amplified them and so on.

So I think that's the right distinction.

The Pope is certainly critiquing an unjust war or someone who's invoking God to support

an unjust war.

And I furthermore agree with you that, you know, he's not referring specifically or precisely

to the Iran War.

And if you want to look at a situation, look at it in light of the seven criteria that

determine whether war is just or unjust.

And you know, right, if you say simply God does not hear the prayers of warriors, well

then Abraham Lincoln and George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

So I think what he meant, I think you're making the right distinction.

It's the prayers of those who are seeking his sanction for an unjust war.

Yeah, Bishop Aaron, one of the things that I think has dragged me a little crazy about

the current sort of online dynamic is the unwillingness to grant any sort of favor or credibility

to the most obvious explanations of things and the leap to the sort of most extreme interpretation

of events.

I think that's happening here where people are immediately jumping to, he must mean a

condemnation of President Trump or the Secretary of Defense.

I think that's also what happened on Sunday, on Palm Sunday, in Jerusalem, where it seems

fairly obvious to me that there was a pretty terrible misunderstanding between Cardinal

Isabella over in Jerusalem where he wanted to go to the church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Yeah, exactly.

But forgive me for the pronunciation.

And he goes to, he goes to the church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Israeli authorities,

the home front authorities have basically shut down the entirety of the old city.

I mean, they shut down the Western wall, they shut down the Al-Oxamaq.

That is because they have rules there that basically in the middle of missile attacks,

if you have a site that is in fact not protected from missile assault.

And it is not within walking distance or quick access to what's called the Mahmoud in

Hebrew or a safe room or a bomb shelter.

And again, the old city, you've been there, I've been there.

He's a war.

I mean, all the streets are extremely narrow and so you can't get emergency vehicles in

there.

And so that is why there have been significant restrictions on not only large scale gatherings,

but even small religious services in kind of historic sites that are not protected.

My guess is what happened is that there was an Israeli police officer stationed outside

the church and the Cardinal showed up and he said, I want to go in and perform mass.

And the Israeli police officer said, my superior says, no one is allowed to come in here.

And that turned into an international incident.

And quickly everybody in a position of authority in Israel from the prime minister to the

president immediately sounded off said, we need to make some sort of provision so this

doesn't happen again.

And you have this turned into some sort of gigantic critique of, I suppose, Jewish anti-catholicism

or something.

And that seems to me like the least likely scenario of what actually was happening there.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I mean, it got resolved pretty quickly.

And as you say at the very highest levels, and there's a photograph of Cardinal Pizza

Bala with a Israeli, I think police official and they're shaking hands and smiling.

And I thought, okay, that really should put an end to it.

There was some misunderstanding or some interruption of a chain of command or something happened

here.

But yeah, to construe that as some massive attack on Catholicism is unwarranted, Christians

have always been concerned about access to the holy places, of course.

And I think it's a difficult time right now and their sensitivities on all sides.

But I think it got resolved pretty quickly.

So, you know, all 12 events were, I suppose.

So now let's talk more broadly about Holy Week, obviously, a lot of kind of bad stuff in

the news recently.

But there's an inspirational time for, for juices an inspirational time because Passover

is coming.

It begins for those of us who are Jewish and celebrate Passover.

It starts Wednesday night.

But for Christians, obviously, this is one of the most critical times of the calendar.

You know, for my listeners who may not follow the Christian calendar or the Catholic calendar,

why don't you explain what goes on during Holy Week?

We recall the events just prior to the crucifixion of Jesus and then his resurrection on Sunday.

So beginning, really with Holy Thursday.

So when Jesus gathers with his disciples for the last supper, the garden gets seminy

that night.

Then Friday, the day of the crucifixion, Saturday, we call it holy Saturday, when Jesus

spends the day in the tomb and then Easter Sunday.

So we call that the past school mysteries, or the Passover mystery, Jesus passing from

death to life.

It's the event by which we are saying from our sins.

And I'd say this too, Ben, in light of Jerusalem and such a focus now on Judaism, it's

the fulfillment of Israel.

Christians are those who say that the great story of Israel, including temple and covenant

and prophecy and promise, all of it is fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

That's what St. Paul, or Rabbi Sha'ul, who studied the feet of Gamaliel and knew the Hebrew

scriptures intimately.

After he met the risen Jesus, he rethought his Judaism in light of the resurrection.

And it's also why when Paul went to these towns in the Eastern Mediterranean, he first

went to synagogues because the Jews would understand his message that the story of Israel

has come to its fulfillment.

That's why we are tied to Israel.

That's the reason Paul has made that claim.

It's up and down the Christian centuries, despite a terrible history of anti-Semitism

that pops up, but the great Christian truth is we're tied to Israel.

You cannot understand Jesus without reference to Israel because we see him as the fulfillment.

As Paul said, yes to all the promises made to Israel.

So that's why anything like anti-Semitism from a Christian standpoint is intellectually

incoherent.

Well, why do you think it is?

It does seem like there has been a resurgence of the Marcy in Heresy that is making new

inroads at this moment.

And Marcy in Heresy being the idea that the Old Testament was actually nothing to do

with the New Testament that actually it's completely irrelevant.

Why do you think that's making such a comeback right now?

Because it does feel like it's making a comeback.

Yeah.

And it's a good question.

And Marcy in Eivism, you're right, it goes back to the second century, one of the oldest

Heresies and one of the most stubborn.

You know, I think part of it is that there's something that is simplifying about it.

So let's just get rid of the Old Testament.

We'll keep parts of the New Testament that present a God that we can find more acceptable.

It's sort of easier and cleaner intellectually.

But when you connect Christianity to Israel, the story becomes so much more interesting.

And it was St. Irenaeus, second century figure, who said no to Marcy in Eivism.

You cannot understand Jesus apart from Judaism.

I don't know.

There's something that's intellectually repugnant about it and something morally repugnant

too, because it gave rise to this deep, you know, rift between Christians and Jews.

Read Paul to the Romans, chapters 9 through 11.

It's his great treatment of this problem.

And in a way we've never improved upon Paul, Romans 9 to 11, as he's tried to tease out.

He says, look, I'm a Jew.

I'm the tribe of Benjamin.

I was a Pharisee by formation.

I was zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

And now I've met the risen Jesus and I'm trying to rethink it all in light of that.

So we've been wrestling with this problem from the very beginning, but Paul represents

a very beautiful, you know, appropriation and retention of Judaism.

Well, Bishop Aaron, I really appreciate the time.

I really appreciate the insight.

I hope that you really have a blessed and tremendous, holy week and a wonderful Easter, obviously.

Thanks, man.

God bless you.

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All right.

Folks, well, in other news, you know, shifting from, you know, things that are really

worth talking about, the things that are not worth talking about, but we have to talk

about them anyway because we cover the news.

There is a brand new garbage conspiracy theory making the rounds is regarding the trial

of Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, whom all I repeat all evidence points

to.

The defense is now predictably throwing spaghetti at the wall and waiting to see what

sticks.

So what are they doing here?

What they're really doing is they are chumming the waters with irresponsible media, hoping

that the jury pool will end up being tainted.

That is the, that is the goal to get somebody in the jury pool who is a conspiracist.

So there is a piece that was printed and it never should have been printed in the UK Daily

Mail because it's trash.

And the pieces headline quote, bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did not match rifle allegedly

used by suspect Tyler Robinson, new court filing claims.

Now, if you just read that headline, if you just read that headline, what you would assume

is that there is a bullet that is identifiable and did not match the rifle, which would be

groundbreaking stuff, right?

That's what the title suggests.

Bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did not match rifle.

Okay, that is missing a key piece of context.

The key piece of context here is that the bullet fragmented.

There is no whole bullet to match up with the rifle.

And when a bullet fragments the way this bullet apparently fragmented, it makes it unidentifiable

because all of the striations that you normally see on the bullet that match it up with the

, with the barrel of the rifle, those are not present.

You can't identify it.

That is an absence of evidence.

It is not evidence of absence.

It's not evidence that Tyler Robinson is innocent because the bullet fragmented and

now you can't directly link the bullet to that rifle.

Because you can't link that bullet to any rifle.

It's not like there's another rifle you can link it to, but that's not how the Daily Mail

wrote the story, which is trash and the Daily Mail should be ashamed of itself.

Again, bullet fragments are difficult to match through the original rifle.

This is sort of like making the case that if OJ's knife had somehow been discovered after

the crimes.

And it had been tossed in a vat of hydrochloric acid and all identifying marks in DNA had

been dissolved, that somehow the inability to connect that knife to OJ's DNA would not

just not link OJ to the crime.

It would be exculpatory.

It would make it sound like he was innocent.

It's just trash.

It's stupidity.

It makes no sense at all.

None.

Okay.

So just to dispense with that idiotic conspiracy theory, because of course, your usual

suspects, the Candacellans of the world are still trying to apparently get Tyler Robinson

off on the basis of their own smooth-brained nonsense.

Okay.

Before we move on to what's going on with Gen Z and our very own Isabel Brown who is taken

to task by the ladies of the view.

Let's take a question from Ocalar, the segment is sponsored by Peer Talk.

Hi, Ben.

Do you think that within the remaining years of the Trump administration, it may be prudent

to shift our battles with our foreign enemies to the enemy within our borders?

That is the growing anti-American radical leftists, seditious politicians, and the non-assimulating

anti-American naturalized citizens who are abusing our bloated social welfare programs.

So I mean, I think that we have to chew gum and walk at the same time.

It's a good question, but I think one of the great lies about American politics is that

we somehow, if we focus on the butter, we can't focus on the guns.

If we focus on the guns, we can't focus on the butter.

The idea being that we must spend resources that we rather spend abroad at home.

These are separate departments of government.

They're spending more money than we have ever spent on anything.

We're spending $7 trillion a year, $7 trillion.

That is a lot of money, a lot of money.

And it turns out that the world continues to revolve whether or not we wish to be a part

of the international scene.

That is just the reality of life.

And so if you, quote, unquote, draw within so that you can focus on immigration.

And meanwhile, Iran spreads its tentacles all over the Middle East, threatens all of

our allies, threatens all of the shipping lanes, and basically grinds our economy under

its boot heel.

That's a problem too.

You got to handle all this at once.

This is the hard part being president.

Okay, meanwhile, the Trump administration is now launching a new effort to hire members

of Gen Z.

This is the thing that they are focused in on, kind of an interesting approach.

According to Fox News, the Trump administration is launching a new effort to make a government

cool again by hiring Gen Z workers to rebuild the federal talent pipeline after a year of

doge cuts and to compete more aggressively with the private sector.

Now again, part of this is probably related to the downturn in job expectations for

Gen Z years.

Now, see if you can provide some jobs for the youngsters.

So some of it is likely political.

But when you talk about Gen Z years and the big problems with Gen Z, you got to say that

there is a bigger problem with Gen Z than mere unemployment concerns.

So for example, we should be somewhat concerned about the fact that there is a complete

degradation of things like family formation with Gen Z, that the entire pathway from

childhood to adulthood is being ignored or blocked off by members of Gen Z.

According to a lot of the studies, more than one third of Americans, 15 up, have never

married as of 2022.

That is up from 23% in 1950 in the U.S., nearly 1.5 million more adults under 35% with

their parents than one decade ago.

And most importantly, there's a 2023 Pew survey of 18 to 34 year olds and it found

that 57% of men said they definitely want children one day, only 45% of women in the

same age range too.

That is a disaster area.

First of all, only 57% of men is already low.

A minority of women saying that they want children one day is crazy.

That's crazy.

So Isabel Brown, of course, she's one of our hosts here at Daily Wire.

Choose its CPAC and she spoke out about this.

It made the harpies of the view very, very upset.

Here was Isabel.

If you're not encouraging your children to grow up and have the courage to get married

and have kids, more kids than they can afford before they think they're ready, it is

high time to start.

It is these choices like deleting our dating apps and quitting birth control pills and

saying I do at the altar that ultimately trickle down into the political policies that

we will see save our country.

So again, I'm wondering what's so controversial about that, telling people it is good to

have kids and that you should get married and that you should have kids, all thriving societies

rely upon this.

But of course, the ladies at the view are very upset, very upset.

They totally crashed out over this.

What?

What?

What?

So my ultimate beef with this is that it wraps a woman's worth up in her ovaries.

In a way that for too long has happened, the whole women's movement was not about bucking

the trend of staying at home or loving tradition.

It was giving women a choice to do what they wanted.

And that's what this is, too, marriage, children.

It's a choice.

And by the way.

It's possible for God's sake.

We know, but be responsible.

But the other thing is they act like people are sitting around just saying, yeah, no, I'm

good.

Most women I know and some don't, but most women wanted to have children.

They don't have them for other reasons.

Okay, I'm just wondering what that Isabel said is anti-choice.

She's saying you should make choices.

She's saying we should not be morally indifference as a society about whether women want to have

kids, which of course is absolutely true.

We should not be morally indifference.

What I'm confused about is why women would want to deny their biology is an important factor

in who they are.

That's the part that's confusing to me.

And women who does a magical power, it is.

My wife is pregnant with child number five.

It is a magical power.

It is incredible.

And again, the notion that my wife is somehow barefoot and pregnant at home in the kitchen.

Right now she's pregnant.

Sometimes she's barefoot and sometimes she's in the kitchen.

She is also a doctor.

This notion that you can't choose to do many things all at once or that you decide that

you want to stay at home with your kids for a while and then work part-time like these

are all choices, but to pretend that a society ought to be utterly indifference about the choices

you make, that it makes no difference to society whether you want to have kids or don't

want to have kids.

That to me is nuts.

That makes no sense at all.

How can any sort of society survive along that basis?

Of course, we ought to have a preference for a morality that pushes child bearing and

rearing.

But it is incredible how many people on the left seem to believe that if you say it's

good for women to have kids, that this is somehow in order, like it's somehow a mandate.

No one is forcing anything.

Anna Navarro says, don't tell me what to do with my, I'm not telling you what you must

do with your uterus.

I'm telling you that it is better for society when women have children than when they do

not.

And it is better for women as a general rule when they want to have children than when

they do not.

I don't know why that's remotely controversial, but I guess that's where we are.

Again, no one is denying anybody a choice.

We're just saying that some choices are better than other choices.

Do you have the call to responsibility for the men who help make these children, right?

I am, I don't know why it's always people lecturing women what they have to do or not

to do.

Bottom line, if you're not paying my bills, you don't get to tell me what I do with my

uterus.

No one's telling you what you must do with your uterus, but again, we teach our kids

all the time.

What our values should be, what our value should be.

It makes no sense to me to treat Isabel Statement that we ought to teach our kids that it's

good to want kids as some sort of assault, as some sort of offensive.

Sunny Haas said, of course, as the children are too expensive, that's the real reason why

people aren't having them.

Again, that is not the case.

Poor countries all over the world, people have tons of kids.

In fact, there is a reverse correlation between the wealth of a society and the number of

children that women are having.

In this country, there's this affordability crisis, and for a two-person household, a married

household, you need over $400,000 for child care, over $400,000.

Most people don't make over $400,000, so she's advocating for people to be born into

poverty, people not being able to feed those children, people not being able to educate

those children, and people not being able to house those children at the same time when

this government is cutting all of the services that would allow people to have families

and big families.

And none of that, by the way, none of these women, if services were to massively expand

for women, none of them would be saying anything different about what Isabel said.

If the government had broader services, no one on that panel would be saying, she's

right, we should encourage women to have more kids.

Nothing, they just would not, and it's silly to pretend otherwise.

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All right.

Well, joining us on the line right now is Arthur Brooks.

Arthur has a brand new book titled The Meaning of Your Life.

Arthur, of course, one of our great thinkers.

He's fantastic.

He argues that today's unhappiness epidemic among young adults, especially, is basically

a crisis of meaning.

Arthur, thanks so much for joining us.

I really appreciate it.

Hi, Ben.

How are you?

You know, thank God doing well.

How are you?

Good.

Well, you know, we just talked to Bishop Bernal a little while ago about Holy Week.

Obviously, a lot of people finding spiritual meaning.

This week, your book is about how people find meaning in life.

And I was just talking a moment ago about Isabel Brown at CPAC saying that we should encourage

young women to get married, to have children, and then women on the view being very upset

about this.

Why are so many people upset about the idea that we ought to promote values that themselves

provide meaning in life, rather than, I suppose, in difference to those values?

We've lost, Ben, it's clear, and you know, this is a research project I've been working

on in this book for the last five years.

We in our society, which is sadly a decline, have lost the ability to find meaning through

the institutions that bring it.

And there's a lot of explanations for it.

I mean, we can talk about ideology and polarization, but fundamentally, this is about how we

have used technology, largely after 2008, somewhat before that.

But to the extent that everybody has a cell phone attached to their hand, and they're scrolling

their hours away, the average person looks at the cell phone 205 times per day, which literally

makes us use our brains in the wrong way to find the meaning of life.

I mean, you go back a couple of generations and the things that you were talking about

were not controversial, and the reason is because everybody knew that an ordinary life filled

with relationships and faith and friendship and love and family, these were the secrets

to the meaning of life.

And we have lost that, not just because of ideological polarization, but because of technology,

which has changed our brains.

So let's talk about that technology changing our brains.

So it is absolutely true that it's almost as though a hack has been performed on the

human mind by a lot of the tech companies that have programmed for virality and by content

providers who of course are attempting to maximize their exposure.

I mean, we do that here on the show.

In order to get more people to watch, to get more eyeballs, but the reality is that it

is as though we have found the most lizard brain parts of ourselves and then maximized those

and poison ourselves in the process.

Yeah.

I mean, humans are unbelievably ingenious and we will wipe out small problems and in the process

create major crises.

It's just amazing when you think about it.

Let's see.

Let's see if we can wipe out a little bit of physical pain, which will turn into anal

g6 that become so incredibly dependency-provoking that we have 100,000 deaths a year in overdoses.

It was a classic case and again, I'm not a techno doomsayer on the contrary.

I'm a techno optimist, but we have not learned how to use our technology appropriately.

The result of it is that our brains, which are hemispheric, there's two sides to each

brain.

This is all in my book, How This Works.

The right side is dedicated to mystery and meaning and love and happiness and the left

side is dedicated to solving technological and analytical problems and we've stopped

using the right side of our brains, which is why people are depressed and anxious and

lonely and they'll lash out for all sorts of dumb activist reasons.

I mean, all of the activism and conspiracy theories are nothing more than a cry for meaning,

a sense of coherence in life and the way to actually get that is to put down your device

and go love your friends and family.

It's almost that simple.

Of course, it isn't because that's not ordinary anymore.

This book is a six-part plan in real life with real hacks and real techniques to find

the meaning of your life just like the old days in the next six months.

I don't want to spoil your book, the meaning of your life.

Why don't you give us a couple of the hacks that people ought to be using in order to

in order to break all of this dependency?

Well, to begin with, you got to get clean.

If we were talking about dependency on drugs in alcohol, I would say you actually can't

go live a new, brand new, squeaky, clean, wonderful life if you don't actually get clean from

the substances.

So I have a whole chapter on actually how to break your neurochemical addiction to devices

with all of the latest research on how to do that.

And by the way, Ben, it's not that hard.

You just have to have a little bit of will, commitment and discipline and you can do it

in about three weeks.

Then after that, there's a bunch of ways that people haven't thought about maybe in

a long time.

Deep conversations.

I give a list of the kinds of questions that you can ask and talk about with your friends

that will literally illuminate the right hemisphere of your brain where questions of meaning

will actually find you.

I also talk about the importance of giving your heart away, falling in love, having kids.

I talk about how incredibly important it is to look upward to the divine, to actually

practice of faith, practice it, notwithstanding your beliefs, and certainly notwithstanding

your feelings.

I mean, you and I is traditionally religious people, me as a Catholic and you as an Orthodox

Jew.

I mean, we feel it sometimes, man, but we practice it every day.

And that turns out to be the secret to the meaning of life, right, Ben?

That's exactly right.

That's exactly right.

And again, we were talking with Bishop Barron about Holy Week.

I mean, the fact that you practice in the world is the thing that makes you a religious

person.

And it is living a religious life, not believing.

I think that we've also become very abstract in the way that we view life, way too abstract

in some sense.

The idea that religious people sit around all day contemplating their navel and the

existence of God is not correct.

I mean, people who are religious typically spend most of their day doing the same kinds

of things everybody else does, but orienting themselves toward the idea that they're doing

it for a godly reason.

It's the exact same kind of stuff.

Yeah.

It's just you're doing it for an actual bigger reason and in other people's lives who are

not religious, they do it with their kids.

I mean, you can do it with your kids or with your spouse.

If you're doing things for a better, bigger reason, you're going to feel more fulfilled

in your life.

And if you're doing it because your phone told you that it's important to be more famous

or because some people responding to you in your, in your mentions on, on X or something.

That's exactly right.

There's one more thing that a lot of young people have been taught that's quite incorrect.

Now, I actually think that young people have been quite victimized by our culture because

they, you know, you and I, I mean, you're a lot younger than I am.

You're 20 years younger than I am, but you still remember them before times.

As do I, you know, before we were attached to our phones to this particular extent.

But one of the things that, that the lies that has been perpetrated with a lot of young

people today, leading to the kind of conversation that you just, that you just illustrated about

this non-controversial idea that family makes you happy is because people are uncomfortable

and they've been told that if they're depressed or anxious, that's evidence that they're

broken and that their suffering must be eliminated.

The truth of the matter is, and I have a whole chapter on how never to waste your suffering.

I have, I have the latest scientific techniques on how to use your inevitable suffering in life

to find the meaning of your life, which is what, by the way, our religions have taught

and our grandmothers have taught.

When I talk about the fact that when you believe that I'm sad and I'm anxious, I need to fix

this thing.

Well, guess what?

Sadness and anxiety in life is evidence that you're alive and have a normally functioning

limbic system that your emotions are working the way that they're supposed to.

I tell my students at Harvard, by the way, when I've been, you know, working on this book,

I say, look, if you study at Harvard, if you're not sad and anxious, you need therapy.

Because the truth is you're doing a hard thing and you're doing it on purpose and that's

how you find the meaning of your life.

So this is six ways to find the meaning of your life.

That's what this book is all about.

Again, that is the title of the book, the meaning of your life.

Arthur Brooks is the author.

All of his work is fabulous.

Go check it out right now.

Arthur, thanks so much for the time and congrats on the book as always.

Thanks, Ben.

Great to see you.

You too.

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