Always love it. Always love it.
Good morning, everybody.
Good morning.
All right, we are Better By Bitcoin today on the pod. We got myself, Bondor, Cipher or Bondor, Gilda P. We have Anton, we have JD, and we have Cory. Welcome to the pod, everybody. Today we wanted to talk about Charlie Kirk directly. Now that we have a lot more information about what happened, what his impact was, what who he was, and just some of the songs on the skull, myself included, didn't really even know anything about the guy. But yeah, we want to just dive in and figure out Charlie Kirk, his legacy, what he did, where he got some stuff right, where he got some stuff wrong. And really just look at his impact in the rest of it. So starting off, I kind of want to just get an intro for everybody with regard to who, like in their mind, before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, who was Charlie Kirk? What was your interactions with him, if you had any or relationship to him, if you had that, what, you know, how or nothing. So I could start just to get the ball rolling because it's easy. I hardly even knew who the person was. I had no idea who Charlie Kirk was. I first heard about Charlie Kirk via my dad maybe four years ago or so. We were talking about Bitcoin stuff and I asked my dad, like, what's something that gives you non-existential hope about the future about America, about going forward in civilization. And he's like Charlie Kirk. It's like, that's the first time I even heard the guy's name. So I had, I, and, you know, I didn't follow him, whatever. I'm more of a Bitcoin guy, obviously. So I was like, okay, well, never heard of the guy. I don't know if, I don't know what his stances are on, on all this other stuff, but for me personally, I super discounted it. So yeah, Anton, what about you?
I was just looking up, I was gonna go on Grok and look up Charlie Kirk quotes about Bitcoin. So if any of you guys want to do that, I knew Charlie Kirk. I met him in, I can't remember if it was 2017 or 2018. For nobody knows who I am, but I'm a filmmaker and I'm a director of photography. I did a movie called Knows safe spaces. That movie starred Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager, and we crowdfunded it. It took almost three years to make the movie, went into theaters, was actually pretty successful. And, you know, Dennis Prager is this conservative educator, founded Prager U. Adam Carolla is a comedian. I don't know what he is politically. He's best friends with Jimmy Kimmel, but tends to have A more conservative libertarian kind of get off my lawn attitude. So the movie's great. If you've never seen no Safe Spaces, find it. Maybe there's a bootleg copy of it on YouTube. I have no idea, but you can find it. Good movie. So at some point we went to Berkeley, went to Cal up in Berkeley. And if you can believe this, because it's the most liberal progressive campus in America, basically, they were having an event. And at the time, Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens were best friends, and they shared the stage together. I might be mixing these up because we went to two or three of these events, and I sort of knew who Charlie Kirk was. I walked into a room. He was. He was, I think, with Candace, who most people didn't know who Candace Owens was at the time. The second I walked in the room, Charlie Kirk ran up to me. Shook my hand and said, thank you for being here. And then he said to her, these are friends.
And.
And then, you know, so that's how I met him. Very gregarious, very charismatic guy. He's also who I turned. I I coined the term Boomer Whisperer that was based on Charlie Kirk, because Charlie Kirk, people who were, like, 70 years old at the time. Charlie Kirk was the ideal person of our generation who they wanted us to be. He could walk up to any rich boomer, ask them for money, and they would just cut him a check. It's an incredible power. And so, anyway, we traveled all over the country, essentially. We went to UCLA and we would just, you know, set up on a college campus, no security, no no formal setup, just walk onto a college campus and just start asking students about ideas. And he was an incredible debater. So anyway, I've said a lot, but I knew him. Great guy. And it's just an incredible loss that we lost him. And he also, in my opinion, was a bitcoiner. He used the word crypto a lot, but he, he was basically there so that also, he's a loss for bitcoiners. What do you guys think?
Indeed.
Yeah.
JD, what is your connection? And you don't have to talk about just specifically before, because I know that you also went to Arizona, Glendale, for the memorial. But, yeah, if you want to jump in JD and see what you got, what your connections were.
Yeah, I knew of Charlie. I have a family member who's a pretty big conservative YouTuber. And so there's a lot of kind of, like, understanding in my mind of, like, what the. Kind of, like, what that world is not by any sense the same degree as, like, Anthony, who, like, fully gets it because he's ingrained in it. But I just kind of had, like, a little bit of an understanding of some of that YouTube world and, like, how small it is, too, like. The family member of mine who is in that YouTube world, like knows everybody. So I'm pretty confident they'd met Charlie at some point in time or debated him, I can't remember. Definitely know that there's some interaction. But the key for me was I didn't really know much about Charlie personally because I was like, I'd seen his videos and my wife would send me all the time. And I'm also from Chicago originally. And so it was really interesting. Like, I didn't realize that he was from Chicago until kind of after the assassination. And then if you really kind of dive into, like, some of the biggest change agents of the current kind of, I'll call it, like, influencer world, like, a lot of them are from Chicago, like Tim Poole from Chicago, Charlie Kirk from Chicago, you know, the family member of mine from Chicago. And so it's a very interesting thing to kind of, like, see a lot of the Midwest mindset permeating the, the current worldview. And Charlie actually embodied that perfectly. Like, what Anthony was saying about him being able to, like, be the Boomer Whisperer. Like, I've always told people the story about what I think if people ask me about New York and La and then the Midwest, like, how would you describe them? And I literally had gotten on an airplane and I was trying to tell somebody who'd never been to Chicago before. So I was in La and, like, hey, I've never been to Chicago. Like, what's it like? I was like, well, if you go to New York and you bump into somebody, they're gonna tell you to go yourself. If you go to LA and you bump into somebody, they're just going to kind of look at you. But it's going to be like that. Gfy look. And if you go to Chicago, somebody can tell you to go yourself, and then they're going to help you with your bag. And sure enough, we land, and the woman in front of us is trying to get her bag down, and she, like, her hand slips off and, like, hits this guy in the face. She's like, what the. Let me help you with that. And it was literally, like, the embodiment of the Midwest mindset, which is like, hey, we have stuff to do, but we're all in this together. And it's a really interesting mindset because in New York, they don't care. In La, they don't care. They're in their own kind of, like, little box. But Charlie embodied what kind of the Midwest mindset is like, hey, we have, like, eight months of suck. Like, it snows, it's cold. Summers are fantastic for, like, a week. And then outside of that, like, it's just kind of muggy and not great, but we just have a good time and we have a beer and draw and stuff. I think that's one of the things.
That.
Watching now so much Charlie content post assassination that I didn't even really, really know. I just watched last night his interview with Dave Rubin. I think there's a really interesting aspect of Christ, I would say, that Charlie embodied that after post assassination. Charlie makes me and made me want to be a better husband, Christian friend, person. And I can get into this later when I talk about actually going to the memorial. But somebody said it that was, I think it might have been Benny Johnson, but somebody was talking about how at the memorial, every single person, including the president of the United States, who got up there to talk about Charlie, made it sound like Charlie was their best friend. And I don't say that to be like, they're just, like, trying to do it. But, like, Charlie had that effect of, like, Charlie was literally every single person's best friend, which goes to your story, Anton, of, like, immediately warm and gregarious and welcoming you in. And I think that was such a unique trait because that's not normal. Most people are like, oh, no. Like, I'm gonna do my thing. How can. How can you help me? And Charlie was like, I'm gonna do my thing, which is, I love you, and how can I help you? And that's such a different. Mindset. And it's really, really sad that that was kind of taken from us. But it's also very, very telling that. And I'm gonna use the left. Like, I'm, you know, we try to not be super political, but at the end of the day, like, I'm currently personally a crypto-anarchist so, like, left and right are totally different to me, but that's a totally different topic. But the moral of the story is the United States is left and right. That's kind of the way our current culture works, and the current. Progressivism, which I wouldn't call liberalism because classical liberalism is totally different than progressivism. But current Progressive culture was so afraid of this guy that they had to take him out. And so it's really, really, it's really, really tragedy. It's really, really unfortunate.
Yep. Yep.
Cory, you're up.
Yeah, I, I wasn't terribly familiar with Charlie before this, Beyond seeing some of his, his videos, but what I ran into a couple years ago. You know, online and I never met him. But he struck me as a Steven Crowder type. He was the guy who did the change my mind table, right? And, and I, when I first saw him, I thought, oh, there's another guy doing the Steven Crowder thing. And I was never a huge fan of, of Steven Crowder. He was, I respect his boldness and his honesty. This is certainly more than I'm doing in that Arena, so it's not to denigrate him, but Steven Crowder's approach was to to say something controversial in a place where he knows it's going to be controversial and study it like crazy, have all the stats and statistics memorized, and then get people who have an emotional response to what he said to debate with him. And it immediately set up this power dynamic where he was in control and the person who was arguing with him was going to sound shrill and emotional. And I never, so it felt straw manny to me. And so I didn't, I didn't know how much actual effect that was having if anyone was actually changing their mind because of that. And over time, I came to realize Charlie was doing everything that he could to help the person make the best point that they were trying to make. He was steelmanning for the person. If they got flustered, he told them to be calm and to help them make their point as best as they could. He wasn't in any way trying to get them to sound emotional or to sound shrill and to communicate his point clearly. And that I thought really actually did advance the debate between the two sides and between people who are fundamentally opposed on basic truths. And this goes back to an episode that we had a week or two ago where we talked about saying simple truths calmly is the most powerful asymmetrical trade we can make against tyranny. Saying things out loud that people have either learned to forget or been conditioned to forget Or, you know, they're, they're conditioned to want to believe something differently. And over time, they start to believe something differently. And if you say something simple out loud, like, like a fatherless home is a bad thing for a family and for a child.
Right.
You can just, you can just say that out loud. And he would say things like that, and, and he would let whatever response to that, that there was, he would just let that happen and let that, and let that be seen. And he didn't need to convince the other person that he was right. He just needed both points to be set how they, you know, in, in their best form. And it showed a real commitment. And this is the, the Christ-like thing for me. It showed such a commitment to Truth being the only Victory. And not that he had a sole Cornerstone of Truth, that he was 100 true all the time, but that if you just say it, I think he would have loved on a number of these points for someone to make a really compelling argument that really made him change his assumptions. And I think you saw that over a number of years that he did actually learn from the people he was talking to. He was malleable. Those are the things that I've come to really respect beyond just the boldness of going into environments that he knew were going to be generally pretty hostile. And that's why it felt like such a loss. It felt, unfortunately, kind of appropriate, which is a horrible, it's a horrible way to describe the assassination, but it felt like this is the natural course in this environment of saying things like this out loud. And I found myself after the tragedy saying, I wish I was more surprised that this happened, but I'm not that surprised that this happened. And that's really crushing. That's a wide open question. I don't know what you do with that. I don't know where you go from there. I will say in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel getting fired or suspended and then coming back and thanking Ted Cruz and Candace Owens for defending his right to free speech, that was a level of humility. I didn't love everything Jimmy Kimmel said, but I really did appreciate that. It was something that I hadn't heard from a person like that in a very, very long time and vice versa, right? I'm not the biggest Ted Cruz fan or Candace Owens fan. And when a principle was actually transgressed, they actually stood on the principle. And that's, I think, the overarching point that I want to make as I dwell on this is that's what I really want. Obviously, the tragedy was a tragedy and we call it a tragedy. But then I also got sad by the response on the right that just took the weapons that we've been criticizing for a decade and said, well, now it's our turn. Let's use them. And that, to me, has no honor in it. It has no commitment to principle in it. It's decidedly not what Charlie Kirk would have done, right? He was a man of honor and principle. And if something transgressed his principles and it was on the right, he would criticize it as quickly as he criticized something on the left that transgressed his principles. So if there's any hope I can take from it, it would be that, that people start looking for the people that are actually holding to principle and, and not to kind of their basest, lowest common denominator party lines on either side. Can I, I don't know if that's resonant with anybody, but, or I hope I didn't, you know, gloss over the actual fact that the tragedy is a horrible tragedy. It's just how I've been processing it.
Yeah.
I'd love to say one thing before you jump back in, Bondor, but I, I think you're, the commitment to truth is, I think, is 100. Charlie's greatest attribute because he embodied that to a degree that I don't think if I've seen anywhere else like that. I'm a little, I agreed, I disagree a little bit about the right using the tactic of the left only insofar as that, like, I was super happy to see that. I was super happy to see the cancer culture shoe on the other foot for a couple of reasons. One, it was really, really hard to explain to somebody cancer culture on the left because they didn't get it. Like cognitively, like the cognitive dissonance was so heavy because they were just in this moral, on this moral high ground of like, no, you should be fired for whatever it was. And so I'm actually very happy that the Jimmy Kimmel thing happened. I don't necessarily know about the resolution, like the Sinclair stuff, like Sinclair can do whatever they want, right, their business. And Jimmy Kimmel's ratings arguably are not as good as literally anybody else on YouTube. Um, like verifiably, because they're using Nielsen ratings, 129,000 is based on 40,000 homes. Like the numbers are actually not great at all. That's besides the point. Where I'm going with this is I'm very glad the right was able to kind of use the cajole against the left. So now everybody can kind of go back like that was a bad idea for anyone. Like the left shouldn't do this, the right shouldn't do this. And I totally agree for that. Like you shouldn't be punished for that, but I do think It was kind of one of those things of like, hey, if you get hit with a stick enough, you can turn around and hit the person with a stick, and then both you can go like, this is a bad idea. And so I hope that that's where we end up is like cancer culture is just kind of like rooted out because it is stupid bar none. But I do think by the same token of some of the stuff we're seeing with the Tylenol nonsense right now of just like literally like, guys, like everything is dumb. But like people should legit like take a breath and realize it's like, okay, there are good points on the left, there are good points on the right. What is the truth? Like, I think that's the key here is like, it doesn't matter what political points you're scoring. All that matters is the truth. And like that, I think is the thing that kind of comes to the surface the most for me on that. So, yeah, sorry to interject that bonus.
It was laid bare kind of when, when a private employer doesn't want to employ someone who celebrates an assassination, I don't think that's cancel culture. I think that's just run of the mill consequence of your actions, right? I think there are limits for what a private company is going to want to see their employees say, right? There's a baseline morality that they want from you.
You're a representative of that company, right? Dave Ramsey says at the events, like Dave Ramsey at one point in time went to one of conferences and he said, before they hire somebody, they'll go and they'll do like an executive. They'll go and do a dinner with their wife, with their spouse. And the spouse of this particular person was just like, kind of had vitriol against Dave. And he's like, if I'm signing your paycheck, I'm not giving any money to that person. And so it was one of those things of like, he's like, you're representative of me. And so if your wife is gonna be badmouthing me at my own dinner table.
No.
And so, yeah, I totally agree. Like, you're representative of the company, including the family. And so, yeah, I agree.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think, you know, the thing that I hope that I hope happens is when, you know, we were, you know, many people on the right and left were railing against Biden's lawfare against Trump and the underhanded ways that they were trying to get him eliminated from the race, which have now been proven completely true. There's been more revelations about the way that they were leveraging Google and YouTube shadow banning people they disagreed with so that there'd be a more consistent propaganda message during COVID Those are all like documented things now. And I think people on the right and left were right to rail against that. And when I see a leverage against the FCC to eliminate free speech, I feel the exact same thing. There's absolutely no difference to me there. And that's what I want to see more of. And I think there's a silent majority in the middle that's getting a lot less silent. And I think that is net a really good thing, right? When they see the capture of the most extreme parts of the 10%, 20% of each side, just kind of use it, utilizing authority to the maximum of its ability. That should make everyone a little nervous. And I hope that that's a good outcome that comes to this.
I think it's also good that this is kind of what Charlie was about, getting to the truth, right? Like you can't have a cancel culture and also get to the truth. Because if you're shutting down voices that are speaking the truth, you're not getting to the truth. I kind of want to ask, I kind of want to ask about the assassination itself and not necessarily the technical details, but more along the lines of how did it affect you? What were you doing when it happened? What was, because it feels, it very much feels, and I've seen this conversation play out a handful of times now, which is this exact question. What were you doing when you found out? And we haven't really seen that question since, I mean, for me, the biggest, that question is usually always in relation to 9/11 and it's almost not in relation to anything else. No one really cares what you were doing when you first found out about COVID It was like, that just kind of rolled out slowly, right? This is a very, stop in your tracks and you know what was happening. You remember it. So I was enjoying everybody who wants to speak.
Yeah.
For covet, I, I haven't, I was literally sitting in jury duty when the country shut down and they came out and, like, you can all go. You need to go home. I was like, oh, that's a specific one to remember. But I'm with you. It was one of those unique events.
Yeah.
So, I mean, if, if anybody has, you know, how, how did the assassination, the actual news of it, the videos of it. How did that affect you? What was, I don't want to put anybody on a spot because that's a pretty personal question. But yeah, if anybody wants to speak about that.
So I, I was on my way, I was driving to the Reagan library and I had a production with Ben Shapiro who was a friend of Charlie Kirk's and a guy who was a producer on one of the Matt Walsh movies that I did called me and said that Charlie Kirk had just been shot. So I couldn't really, I was driving on the freeway, but I did kind of like pull up X for a second and immediately see the shot and in the wide shot, which was so graphic and God bless Elon Musk for having X. I don't love that everybody had to see something so traumatic, but if X didn't exist, I'm not sure that seeing that graphic imagery would exist so quickly. So I saw it and then got to the. It's, I want to say the shoot, but I got to the production and immediately was told that it was canceled and that Ben Shapiro wasn't even going to show up. And then, yeah, so we went into the Reagan library and. There were many people there who were friends of his, so people were sobbing. And actually, one woman led us all in prayer for him in the middle of the Reagan Library. And then we did a very awkward tour of the Reagan Library because we were inside. But we didn't know that he had died yet because he hadn't died. He went to the hospital. So it was actually looking kind of hopeful at the moment. But then as I'm sitting there, I'm below the big Air Force One and I pull out X. I see again. But this time it is a 4K close-up of the shot. And the second that I saw that, I was like, oh. And I knew. I'm like, that was a kill shot 100. So that's how I found out.
Was. Was the Ben Shapiro cancellation because they were worried it was going to be a coordinated attack on conservative influencers?
I don't know. I don't think so. It wasn't an event that he was speaking at. He was actually interviewing a family whose son had some sort of genetic condition that, I don't know, they were trying to, I don't know, get U.S. healthcare to pay for. I'm not even sure what the thing they were talking about. He just was distraught and needed to sort of regroup and figure out what he was going to say about it, I think.
Yep, that makes sense.
I.
I was, I don't even remember what I was doing, but I was, we might have, I think we went, I think we had a show that day. I think we did a show. And I think, I just remember opening X and I get served Charlie videos every so often. It's like, oh, it's a Charlie Kirk video. And it was a longer cut of the kill shot. And the first thought that I had, I was like, that's weird. There's no subtitles. And then I see him get shot. I was like, what? What just happened. And I had the exact same thought. You didn't. As, you know, I. I hunt, and I like to. I like to go shooting and stuff like that. And instantaneous. I was like, that's it. I was like, there's no. There's no question in my mind that he was gone instantaneously, which we have now confirmed. But I was just sitting here, and I was. I was like, dude, I don't even know what to think right now. And it was the next day, because that was, I think, Tuesday, there was a, like a man. Oh, no, it was that night. It was that night. There was a men's group at my church, and we talked about it. And it was even just that day because we found out, you know, later that day that, that it was confirmed he was, he was dead, that there are gen Z guys at this men's group, and they're talking about where they were. And it was interesting because it's like, that was the same thing that I remember experiencing during 911 like this, this is, this generation is 911 this is the first, like, covid was kind of like a thing that we all, it was a shared experience. But this was a moment. Like, this was a moment because.
With.
911 it kind of, like, congealed the entire country around this, like, patriotism idea. But I really am hoping that this will congeal the country around this truth idea, because that, I think, is the biggest thing that I've been seeing is, like, I have a lot of people that I know on the left who have said, I'm done with progressivism. Like, if we can't literally have a dialogue with somebody, we have to kill them. That's not who I am. Like, I'm not a violent person, and so it's. You know, it's really interesting to me that, you know, I had my moment. I was sitting here kind of working, but then later that day, people were talking about where they were when they heard. And the question was like, where were you when you found out? That was the question asked by Gen Z to another Gen Z. And I was like, this, this literally feels like 9 11 because I remember for 911, I was sitting in, sitting in class, listening to the radio, Spanish class, and my Spanish teacher had family that worked in the towers. And so it was like one of those things of like, what is going on right now?
So.
Yeah, all due respect to the comparison, I think the loss of life in 911 needs to be considered quite a bit more of a tragedy. I understand what you're saying with the solidarity that I think a lot of America felt around that and unifyingly, you know, rejecting political assassination. There's, you know, it's different in, in, in multiple ways, but the, the fact that it wasn't a foreign entity, it wasn't a foreign adversary, I think, caused this one to be more soul searching, I think, than 9 11 because 9 11 it was so, it was so much easier to whip up a frenzy of patriotism. I felt it. Everyone felt it.
Right.
There's, there's this entity out there that hates us so much that they want to crash our economy and kill thousands of our people. And that's all they think about and want to do all the time. They planned it, they premeditated it. And with this one, there were a depressing number of people celebrating. But in the grand scheme of things, not that many people were celebrating, right? And they got blasted out everywhere. It's kind of the worst of the worst of overly online people that don't really understand that there's consequences to their actions. And I don't shed a tear for any of them that got fired. I was on a plane flying from Boulder to Alaska for a shoot in both locations for a documentary shoot. And so I heard about it through the text thread with you guys because I didn't have any internet. So I couldn't follow any news. I wasn't getting any updates. And I asked, like, if I was on Twitter, like, what would I know right now? Like, what's the news saying right now? And I think it was Bonders just like, we don't really know anything other than he was shot. So then I'm just sitting there on a plane waiting for the text thread to update to see if anything happened, which is an awful, awful place to be. And then afterwards just talking with the team, like, did you guys see what happened? And immediately it was like, did you see what happened? Did you see what happened? Everyone knew we were talking about the same thing immediately, right? And that's that kind of unifying terrible thing that just has that effect. And I was kind of in a daze, honestly, because there's just so much to unpack, right? There's the immediate Like who did it? Why was it organized? Was it one rogue person? And you know, what kind of support did the person have? Is there more coming? All those sorts of questions that fly out when something that chaotic happens. It's, you know, it's that Joker line that everyone freaks out when it's not part of the plan, right? When a truckload of soldiers dies, no one bats an eyelash, but I threaten to kill one mayor and everyone loses their minds. It's because it's not part of the plan. And this is a not part of the plan event, right? It's an extreme violence that's not part of the plan. And this is a horrible thing to say, but there's a, there's a reality where mass shootings, random mass shootings feel more like part of the plan of America for the past 15 years, right? There, since Columbine, when the entire country melted down when Columbine happened, when with good reason, and now we're like, oh, there was another one, right? And, and that But this, like, if you look up political assassinations of pundits in America, there aren't any, right? This is singular, right? The only real political violence that we see is assassination attempts or successful assassinations on actual leaders, right? Like, even when Trump got shot at, it wasn't nearly as unifying as this because it makes sense, right? That's something that's happened. As long as we have recorded history, there have been plots and assassination attempts on political leaders. On political pundits in America, that's a new thing. That to me is what jumped the shark and I think has people self-searching in a much different and more profound way than anything I've seen before.
Yeah.
For me, I found out about it on a call with Jordan. Jordan Bush actually told me while we were on the call. The call went from being a productive call to a very quiet and unproductive call. For me personally, I was just trying.
To.
Figure out who Charlie Kirk was. So for me, there was no real shock. It was like, yeah, that's awful. It's crazy that somebody got assassinated. But who was the guy? Like what was the impact? What was the actual thing? And as the hours tick by, you start to see, wait, like you see this, you start to see the videos of him on campus. You start to see the interactions he's had. You start to see the declarations of faith that he made in front of huge amounts of people. And all of the, like, my image of Charlie Kirk in my head was essentially nil. On his, on his day of assassination. And it got, it just, it like his, his image went from nil to larger than life, like bigger than anybody in America, right? Bigger than Trump, way bigger than Trump. And he did that in 24 hours, maybe it's just wild amounts of influence just came to the surface.
Right?
Crazy on that note. Like, what, what, what is his legacy? Like, what was his influence? Like, going forward, how are people going to be looking back? Like, for you personally, what, what is the, what's the impact that, I mean, JD, you mentioned a little bit earlier, you, like, it makes you want to be a Better Christian, a Better husband, a Better dad. But, yeah, what, what's his legacy? What's Charlie Kirk's legacy? What do you think?
Yeah, I would say it was really interesting to me that I had just been dwelling on this point that I brought to the podcast of saying simple truths out loud is the asymmetrical trade against tyranny. And I was thinking in my own life, can I do that just a little bit louder than I was doing it? And then I saw this and then, you know, Charlie Kirk gets assassinated. I'm like, I could do it a lot more than I'm doing it right now. Why am I looking at stepwise changes? Toward that. Why am I thinking about, like, how do I make a two percent improvement on this? This guy was, I mean, incredibly bold to say the things that he was saying in front of the crowds that he was saying them. That's the legacy for me. I don't have to ramble on about that.
I mean.
I just think it's incredibly bold. And I think it might be one of the only charges as a Christian, right, in terms of, like, you care for the poor. You use your power and influence for the sake of people that don't have it to the elevation of the people that don't have it. And you have a commitment to truth and hope. We're not under authority to lose hope. We're not under authority to. To change the truth for our own benefit. Those are really simple things that if you just do them at, you know, at full volume, are going to make waves no matter what.
The biggest takeaway for me is I knew Charlie, and I knew him as a master debater, if you've seen the South Park, and a great political commentator on the conservative right wing tip. What I didn't know about him was that he was a great evangelist. He was incredible at actually sharing the gospel, really telling the story of the gospel and inviting people to accept Jesus for salvation. And I think the reason I didn't know him that way is because he often presented the gospel, but it was in the midst of a two hour debate, and it kind of got lost in the debate. The thing about Charlie getting assassinated is that he got the craziest signal boost that he could have gotten. One that he never would have gotten in life, where people who never would have wanted to listen to him want to figure out who he was. And so now you have these clips. And just like we've seen with our own podcast, the success of the YouTube shorts are what get us subscribers. And, you know, it's a bite-sized piece of the most poignant thing that we said in an hour long podcast in that same way. I have probably 10 times now seen Charlie present the gospel, seen that clip get clipified somehow, and that thing has millions of views. So literally, the gospel has been presented by Charlie Kirk millions of times because of his death. So for me, it's given me a boldness to realize that I can do the same thing in my life. I don't have to compartmentalize my faith in Jesus Christ when I'm talking about something else. It's okay. To also share my faith while I'm doing other things, even while I'm on this podcast. And that itself has power. And so we're seeing that. Hopefully I don't have to get assassinated for the truth of the gospel to get out there from me.
But yeah, before you go, JD, I just wanted to tag on to that. Anton, you and I are directly in the film industry. You work more, I think, in groups that might tend to agree with Charlie more. I almost never do. And that was a real kind of like let it hit home moment of that, right, where this guy knew, he was wearing a bulletproof vest, wasn't he? Like he knew that he wasn't.
But.
He knew he was putting himself in harm's way for this. And I started to think like how many times have I censored myself for the approval of people I don't respect at all? And what is the point of that? So it made me really self-reflect about that. I don't know, JD, in your world, if that was part of the thing that drove home for you.
He might have been, by the way, I was thinking, I was like, was he? And so that was not a no, but it was a thinking through. Charlie's legacy for me is a commission for men to be men. Like, I think there's been such a big divide with the hunt for truth. What is a man? What is a woman? What is all this stuff? And I think what is the truth of masculinity? Like, it really, really hit me hard seeing the video from Fox of his daughter running up to him. That, like, with the video, just kind of, like, circulated over and over and over again, because, like, that, that is the truth of being a great father. Like, your kids want to come to you. Your kids love you. Your wife loves you, and you love them. And I think for me, the, the biggest thing was just, like, wanting to be a better husband, wanting to be a better dad, wanting to be a better friend. You know, the, the most important thing for me, I think, was just kind of, like, trying to take the tenets that we've been talking about of, like, you know, I think as I've watched more and more of Charlie's debates, the most poignant thing that I think he said repeatedly is like, hey, I'm not blaming you, but I'm blaming the system that is indoctrinating you. Like, I'm not blaming you. Like, it's not your fault. When he says, specifically, he's like, it's not your fault. But the system is failing you. It's not your fault, but the system is failing. It's not your fault that the college is failing you. He was talking to an economic student. He's like, hey, do they teach Thomas Soul here? And like, no, Mesis. And he kind of goes through all these different economists. And the guys like, no. He's like, so you're not getting an education, you're getting an indoctrination. It's like, it's not your fault, but you're being lied to. It's not your fault, but they are not giving you what they say they're giving you. And I think For me, the legacy is trying to live into the truth. And even more specifically, Charlie's legacy is a commission for all people to try to live into the truth of the life that God has placed before you and the race that you are to run. Because I think that for me, I have over my shoulder here, the sign that's red that you can't see, but it says, well done, good and faithful servant. And that just hit me like a ton of bricks when I walked into the auditorium on Sunday. You know, because as Erica said, and everybody else said, Charlie ran the race he was given and he ran it to the best of his ability, to the fullest. And that, I think, is the only thing we can all try to do is try to be more like Charlie and run the race that God has placed before us. And we're all at different places. Like, I feel like I've done a terrible job of trying to run the race that I've been given so far, but that doesn't mean I can't start today. That doesn't mean I can't start tomorrow. It doesn't mean, well, don't start tomorrow. Start today. It doesn't mean I can't start today. To try to run that race to the fullest extent that I'm capable now. And so I think that's been the biggest thing for me is like this challenge, this charge to step into that and just to stop being afraid.
I think for me, one of the big, one of the big takeaways is just the, the, I think, Cory, you posted this in the chat, but the, the, the visceral clear mapping to the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts 8 and 9. Like, you read that account and you can just substitute out the pieces. And the pieces are Stephen argues from the Holy Spirit, which, like, Charlie's on video, literally saying, the only reason you guys, like, think that I'm nice is because this holy spirit is talking through me. So St. Stephen is arguing for Christianity, and he's, he's, he's speaking so powerfully that his enemies cannot refute him. And so they just get more and more angry, and they manipulate the leaders, they manipulate the, the teachers, they manipulate the politicians. To do whatever is necessary to get him killed, which is how Stephen dies. He basically speaks the gospel and that leads to his death. And the parallels to Charlie are just outrageous, right? This is exactly what he was doing. That's not to say that Charlie's a saint or should be beautified and the rest of that stuff, but it's just the mapping is visceral. When you read the account in Acts, you're like, wow, that's crazy. And then you read the next chapter. But this is like, no, that's a real person who really got stoned in the marketplace. Charlie is a real person who really got assassinated in the marketplace. This is the cost of Christianity, right? And then what are we doing? We're trying to dodge and head, Dodge and hedge and weasel, weasel our way out of, you know, well, I don't want to speak the gospel today or whatever. And it's just like, whoa, guys.
So, yeah, I just, I wish I could take full credit for it, but it came from a pastor who called me, and he was, he, he had preached that, that this is a martyr, this is a martyrdom situation. And I initially had this reaction, you know, you know, a little bit ashamed to say, I just, like, it doesn't feel like that. It doesn't feel like the stoning of St. Stephen or like the Christians in Nigeria who are being killed every day. There's been like 7,000 of them this year. And there's a radical religious opposition to them and people walk into their churches and shoot everybody and burn down the churches. That to me is such a clear, obvious martyrdom and that's the way we generally conceive of it. But the point that he was making and why he sent me that Stephen passage was because he was saying the people that were opposed to Stephen didn't care that he was getting together with a community to worship God. They cared that he was saying that people had value beyond what Caesar said had value or beyond what the Jewish Authority at the time said they had value, which gave them freedom from the, that those authorities. He was elevating life, right? He was saying there's a greater Authority out there. Which was a counter political point that he was making. He was saying the truth of my heart and the truth that I, as I understand it, is that your politics are wrong. He was actually a, you know, a political actor. And I think the reason that it, it, I initially didn't like that explanation, and I had to be convinced of it, and I am now, is that we have this idea that there is a secular world that we can step into as secular actors. And then we step out of it into our Christian lives. And that hasn't been true for more than, I mean, you could go back to the Enlightenment and the Renaissance where we kind of had this idea, this kind of multicultural, like there's the secular world and the spiritual world and they're different. And I think partly because of Fiat, we've been allowed to live in this faux piece, this false piece about, you know, this secular world being just a marketplace of ideas. And then you can go do whatever religious activity you want, apart from that. And I think that veil is just breaking for me, right? I think that veil is just tearing a bit that everyone is bringing their spirituality into the secular world. And it leads to these wild misses in terms of what we think basic agreeable truths are. And I think the Christian worldview allows for you to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with you and requires you to love the person who disagrees with you and the person who hates you. And that's our real power. That's our real strength. Not appeasement, right? Not telling them they're right or pretending that we don't disagree with them, but loving them in the disagreement. And he really embodied that, and it was convicting for me. I don't know if anyone else have that sort of reaction to it. I don't know. I don't think we want to go too far down the martyrdom hole. But I think, I don't know. Anton, do you think I'm off base on that?
No.
And I'm really happy to hear that you had a pastor say that because, I mean, I don't want to call my own church out. I go to a church in Hollywood that's not extremely progressive, but it feels like it's always battling that. It's kind of over time assimilated to the leftist Democrat progressive culture of Los Angeles. And they, I wasn't there the weekend that the weekend after he was assassinated, but I asked around and they said, they sort of mentioned that something like that happened, but they never said his name. And then I was there the next Sunday and they definitely never said his name. And it's just so interesting to me that this incredibly huge cultural movement where somebody who, it's very clear now was an evangelist for the gospel was politically assassinated. And some churches were just like, eh, I'm not going to mention it. So it makes me happy to hear that that was your experience. I, I kind of do want to steer things a little bit away from the martyrdom aspect to, to talk about a little bit of what he believed. Are you guys cool with that? Because I, yeah, I just, I looked up on Grok.
We're just, I don't want to, I didn't want to go too far down the rabbit hole because it's, I just feel like it's out of character for us, but I would love to answer. Yeah.
All right.
So as long as we don't rake. As long as we don't rake his grave.
Right.
But, yeah. Okay.
No, no, no. These are all positive things. Positive things. So Charlie Kirk was Pro Bitcoin. Like, I had mentioned this early in the show that he would sometimes use the word crypto, and I'm not gonna. I would never speak ill of the dead if anybody. Uses the word crypto who's alive. I kind of am like, I write them off immediately. I'm like, you're a scammer. I want to be a toxic Bitcoin maximalist. There's just no place for that. It's not the word we need to be using right now. So forgiving Charlie of ever using the word crypto, he did talk about Bitcoin a lot, and I would encourage anybody to do this. All I typed into Grok was, what did Charlie Kirk say about Bitcoin? What are his direct quotes? And there were a couple of interesting ones. I'm not going to read them all, but I'll just read one great one real quick. He said, Bitcoin is a decentralized way that everyday patriots can build wealth, store wealth, transfer wealth without big daddy government monitoring, infiltrating, observing, or preventing your God-given right to your own private property. And then Media Matters, this is funny, Media Matters posted this clip. And they posted it with the headline, Charlie Kirk, cryptocurrency and Christians are two threats to the new world order.
Well, here's the thing. I think they're right as they understand the new world order.
Right.
I don't think cryptocurrency is. I think that cryptocurrency is a great way for a handful of people to take a money from stupid people. But I think in a way that that's right. And it's similar to what we were saying about St. Stephen. But he's basically arguing for the fact that there is a way to elevate people by treating them fairly. And it's really telling which kind of major institutions found that threatening. If you can boil it down to what he's saying economically and about Bitcoin, then, and what you're arguing for is that people should get to retain the value of the work that they do. It's really interesting who disagrees with that, who finds that really offensive or threatening or even violent, right? Because there is a violence to the financial system. There's a violence to the level of corporate and political capture of the financial system that keeps people in systems of oppression. That opinion does do violence to that, to the other opinion.
Right.
They're in, in stark contrast with one another. But it's, it's interesting that they told them themselves that quickly.
I think it's interesting.
I don't hear any more quotes of his.
I was listening to a bunch, and actually, the, the thing that I would say, because actually, I, I watched his last interview was like an hour before he was assassinated, and it was with a guy who has a bunch of restaurant chains in Arizona, and I'll try and see if I can find. I bookmarked it, but it was super interesting to me. Yeah, here it is. And Elon reposted it. The second episode is by Andrew K. Smith and highly recommended if you're an entrepreneur to watch. I didn't know Charlie was an entrepreneur. Like, I think that was the biggest kind of learning from me. He's like, oh, he's this pundit. He's this pundit. Charlie grew a company from a garage at like 718 and a half. It's like a garage in the middle of nowhere, Illinois to $100 million a year. Like growing anything past a million is hard. Growing something to 100 million with a thousand plus employees, like that is an insane amount of effort. But then also just like focus and like capability. He was such a very, very thoughtful and strategic thinker when it came to business outside of just politics. And in this talk, he's asked by this guy, hey, I hear you're an investor. And he's like, I hear you do alternatives in crypto and everything else. And then Charlie basically was like, he's like, yeah, I do some of the crypto stuff, but I'm not going to show you a coin is what he said. And where I'm going with all of this is I think to Corey's point, it was fascinating to see how the pursuit of truth for Charlie was the goal, period, because he always believed he could be wrong. All of these interviews that are kind of coming out now, like his last talk, and even in this, he was just like, this is how I believe it now. What am I missing? He would always say, what am I missing? What am I missing? Here's how I believe it, here's how I understand it. What am I missing? Same thing with Dave Rubin. He's like, Hey, here's what I believe. Here's what I understand. What am I missing? And so I think the conciliatory nature of always extending the olive branch to learn something new is something I really hope to do more of myself because I don't think that's my MO. That's not my normal thing is I'm like, no, I'm right for this reason. And it's like, oh, but what am I missing? And so I hope I can ask that question more. Post this.
Yeah, I'd agree with that. I, I think to, to piggyback off of that, it's, I think it's also a very post-Enlightenment very Protestant, non-denominational sort of understanding, kind of Baptist understanding of God and the Bible, that with you and the Holy Spirit and the Bible, you have the entirety of Truth that has ever existed or ever will exist. And I just don't believe that's the way the Lord has, has established the kingdom of God. He's established a community. There's nothing that you can understand better alone, then that wouldn't be helped by understanding it in community, even if you're in a community that entirely disagrees with you, or if you're even maybe more dangerous if you're in a community that entirely agrees with you. And I think we have this conception of the kingdom of God that it's smaller than us, and that once you've figured out some truth, that you've figured out the truth of the gospel, and that there's a paradox where you've understood enough to be saved, right? That like a child can understand enough, like and as you understand that, if you believe it, you're in, right? It's, it's, the door is wide open. But then once you're through the door, there's this enormous city that you haven't explored, right? And the most mature, like Tim Keller didn't know the whole thing. He didn't, he didn't have a perfect understanding of the truth of the kingdom of God. And so we need community, we need each other. And everyone I've ever met has a reflection of God in them that I haven't seen before. Before I met them, I didn't know what that was. And it's a unique fingerprint that's different, and it's a different way of understanding God than I've understood before. It's a more broad, it's a more complete way of understanding God. And I think that level of humility is so vanishingly rare among Christian leaders today, because it's not a soundbite culture of Christianity at all. It's a humility of, I've come to understand this about the kingdom of God. This is my perspective, and I think it's really helpful for people. Now I need everyone else, right? I need everybody else to help inform that opinion and to understand it more fully. And that should be a joyful thing. That should be something that we seek and long for. And I think seeing someone in the public sphere actually acting that out, living that out was really rare. It's a real contrast from most of the messaging that we get from Christianity. I also think it's one of the reasons that people think most of the Christian voices that are loud are didactic and condescending and exclusionary. And I think that's such a terrible crime because we have this ability to say, I understand the truth fully enough for me and I need you. That should be how we build community. That should be how we build community across borders. I don't know if it sparked that for anybody else, but I really did dwell on that after his passing.
It.
Charlie was welcoming people to a movement. So many people who are the type of people that are in media or on stage, they're kind of narcissistic. They love hearing their own voice. They just, I, you know, I mentioned that he was friends with Candace Owens. I used to know Candace as well.
I. Yeah.
Anyway, she can be somebody who, even if she's wrong on something, it's like she's running downhill. She has the momentum, and she just can't stop herself. She's like, double down, triple down, quadruple down. Charlie wasn't like that. He wanted to give a microphone to people to let them share their thoughts and opinions, and maybe there was something to learn. And if he got to a point where he was confident, that he had something that he could teach them, then he would take the conversation back over. But he was very, very charitable. And what you were describing, Cory, is his humility. And that is so rare. It's so rare of a quality to have somebody who speaks so confidently and speaks with so many words who is also humble. And, you know, that's, that's what we're realizing now, why we're still talking about him so many days after his assassination and still revealing all these things about his character, because they're just becoming more and more apparent, and it's It's becoming more apparent what a huge loss it was, hopefully, and I pray that many more people will study him and will mirror some of his positive traits, and we're gonna get a thousand more Charlie Kirk's as a result of his death.
Yeah, I think one of the videos that's coming to mind as you say that, which this video is just coming out in the last couple of days, it's from a year or so ago, but he's out in the video, he's outlining why the right has a defensive posture and why that's the wrong posture and that it needs to be an offensive posture. Like, how do we as the right go on the offensive? And listening to like, Whoa, he like 100% got that right. I mean, as I say all the time and as you guys have parroted ever so often, the move is to attack. And one of the things that you quickly realize when you bring an argument, when you bring a debate to somebody, when you lodge a question that challenges someone's worldview is when you go on the offensive, you immediately see defensive posturing. And the only way to get down or to get through defensive posturing is this humility that you're talking about. Anton. And I suspect that he figured that out pretty early on and just completely worked on flexing that muscle of, oh yeah, what did I get wrong here? Or how can I steel man your argument? How can I say it better than you are?
Right?
And because that's literally like when you're going on the offensive, the objective is to change minds and you're never going to be able to change minds. If you're just banging your head against the wall. No, no, no. The objective is to take the wall down. How do you do that? Humility. Humility, like, is literally disarming your opponent. But, yeah, I forget.
Yeah, I was just gonna add that.
Go for it.
When you say. When you say attack, like, you mean the way Jesus did, right? You mean a Christian attack, right? There's no.
Yeah, literally enter the world. Like, right.
There's no, like, you're in your little thing.
It's like. The attack is, is one of humility and self-sacrifice and love. And it's a, and it can be offensive to someone who's not used to that, who's not ready for that. And they can, you have to stand the side of your own blood. You have to be able to take a punch in order to execute an effective Christian attack. But I would say Charlie did attack and never violently. It's incredible.
Yeah. Yep.
The turn the other cheek.
Right.
I think there's so many things that as a Christian, you, when you reread the Bible the second time and the third time and the fourth time and the fifth time, you get a greater understanding of all this Nuance. But the turn the other cheek is such a epitome or it epitomizes the humility we are called to show, because at the end of the day, it's like if you have somebody who slaps you, and then they do it again, you're like, hey, sorry. You turn the other cheek. That is completely disarming because if they were in the wrong and then you're kind of giving them a chance to kind of prove it again, it's like they're going to hang themselves with their own rope. And the disarming nature of that act is so. It is what Charlie embodied. It was like, hey, he's like, here's, here's the mic. And I think I'm sorry, world. I will say one thing about this turning another cheek thing that's interesting. Go back and watch Charlie's debates, because one of the things that I noticed, because, all right, I'm really into this, trying to, like, watch what's kind of going up right now, or, rather, like, the actions that he took. And if you'll notice, he would pick up the mic and speak, but then the next thing he would always do. Is while the other person was speaking, he would put it down. He would, he had these visual signals of kind of, like, giving them the chance and the opportunity. And I think that's one thing that we, we've kind of lost with this internet culture that we have is, like, the WebEx and the zoom. But, like, if you really look at the, the communicative signals Charlie would give to kind of, like, lay down his, his, you know, he's like, laid bare. He's like, hey, I really want to hear you. I'm gonna put my mic down. So you understand, I'm not going to shout over you. So you understand, I'm not gonna come at you. So you understand, you know, and then he had, you know, the white supremacist, whoever, come on and be like, oh, whatever. It's like, you know, Charlie would, like, very eloquently deconstruct those arguments of the racists and the white supremacists and all these people and kind of just, like, lay them, like, let them hang themselves. And so it was really interesting to kind of see how he would do that and not just. Why he was doing it.
So, Anton, you hinted about this, but I mean, this podcast is a Bitcoin podcast. The whole purpose, like we're trying to like, hey, Bitcoin makes the world better. Now, Charlie Kirk operated in a world that is now different because of his assassination. I'm curious, where does Bitcoin come in to this equation? That can now come in because I have an answer here, but I'm not going to give it right away. I want to hear what you guys say. The world has changed since his assassination. The Overton window has shifted. What did Charlie Kirk, I mean, you got a whole bunch of stuff, right? The world has now changed. So that pattern doesn't, it no longer applies to the world we live in now. What do you guys see that has changed? Where has the Overton window shifted?
I wasn't prepared for this question, but absolutely we're living in a different world. We're living in a post Charlie Kirk assassination world.
And.
I, in the same way that we're saying that he was a Christian martyr, think about other people who pretty much, we can all agree, were martyrs. Martin Luther King Jr. Is one of those people. The left, the progressive type people who think that Charlie Kirk was a racist and a misogynist and a white supremacist or whatever things that they attached to him when they've never heard anything that he had to say. Those people, when, when people who have critical reasoning and people who, who are of some level of intelligence, start attaching things to Charlie Kirk the same way that people attach things to Martin Luther King. It is going to shock them. We're seeing this. I mean, all the people who got fired for the horrible things that they said on social media about Charlie Kirk were ignorant and they were unprepared for the new world that we're living in. So my argument is just that it is a Monumental change and things are going to be different now. So I'm curious what you guys think the things are that are going to be different as a result of this?
Yeah, I think for me it was the rhetoric around the extreme nature of the language on both sides, but I think more acutely on the left because of the election of Trump. And I think if it had been Kamala, it would have been more acutely on the right. But the comparisons to fascism and the comparisons to full-on communism and those sorts of things are really extreme. I'm personally not a huge fan of Trump, but calling him Hitler is the most asinine, ahistorical nonsense I can imagine. And same with Kamala, I think she had very aggressive socialistic tendencies. Calling her Stalin is absolutely ridiculous and an affront to the 20 million people that Stalin starved with actual communism. And that sort of ratcheted up rhetoric is, you know, I think when you are terminally online and your, the consequences of your words and actions are so far removed from you, I think it's easy to forget that, that your words and actions do have consequences. And, and I think in the wake of Charlie Kirk, there were a lot of those terminally online people saying, ah, finally one down, who's next? And realizing you don't have, like, 99 of your world is behind you, but 99% of the real world thinks you're absolutely insane and wants you to be fired and will never hire you. They don't want to talk to you. Like you have completely removed yourself from society with these fringe views. And I think that Overton window, I think the, I alluded to it at the beginning, but I think that that silent majority in the middle is getting a little bit more loud and being like, all right, enough of this nonsense. Like stop this, right? Stop lawfare on both sides. Stop this insane rhetoric on both sides. It's ridiculous. And just because one person is in power doesn't give you the right to pretend you're a revolutionary fighting against 1939 Hitler. It's just ridiculous. And it was never true. It was never even close to being true on either side. That whole revolutionary streak, like you look at the actual bravery of the revolutionary war was throwing off a tyrant, like a literal king who was taxing the country for 2%, by the way, on all goods. That was the entire tax. And that was like taxation without representation. That's oppression. We're fighting against oppression. That's right. That just makes sense. It makes logical sense. Trump's executive orders are not even a shade of that. They're not even close to that. And I think that sort of screeching rhetoric is starting to land on deaf ears more and more.
I'll say this.
Oh, go ahead.
This is my kind of last note because I got to jump in a second, but I totally agree with what you're saying. Cory and I have some clients and they're all over the world. We had a call earlier this week and clients are in Argentina, Italy, France, all over the world and then Canada. Every single person was like, hey, has the Charlie Kirk kind of news got to your country? And if so, what's the response? And every single one of them was like, it's here. And everybody's fed up. Everybody is tired with the rhetoric, tired with the politics, tired with the constant shaming and browbeating coming from the political divide. And it's like people have had enough. And so that Overton window, I think, is shifting to be like, hey, civil discourse is correct, not this Abomination that has been created by a media that just needs clicks. This hyperinflated, constant screeching, like all around the world, everybody is now at a fever pitch where they're like, enough is enough. We need to stop all of this violence and come to the table and have real conversations again and not just screech about hyperbolic baloney everywhere. I think that's been probably the biggest shift is not just an American shift, But a global shift back towards sanity.
Yeah, I'd agree. And I just kind of like a quick addendum to that. I think specifically in our case, because the right's in control now and the Democratic Party is trying to figure out how to get, get control back. I think they're realizing too how much of that is so unwinning. It's not winsome, right? That even among their own side, they're realizing like the majority of these issues that we care about, the majority of the country doesn't care about, even among our own party, they just don't care. About these things that we're shrieking about. And I think that that's been driven home way more and more, right? Especially as they lose young people for the first time in like 20 years, they're like massively losing young people. I think those sorts of things, whether you want to call it an attack of morality and conscience or not, I think there's a lot of that going on. But even if you ever just want to win again, you gotta self-examine and be self-aware about these tactics that you're taking.
One of the things that comes to mind in terms of an Overton Window shift is that, and you can see it in visual or real time, people on the left going like, oh, who is this racist Charlie Kirk? And then they go look up, well, again, I'm going to prove that he was racist. Here we go. And they look up all the videos and they're like, there's not a racist bone in his body. I was lied to. What else have I been lied to? And I feel like that is for me, that's the shift. You could describe the whole thing in that. What else have I been lying to? Everything's opened up for debate now, like you guys are saying. Is this true? Is that not true? Zach talks about it a lot. We're entering the age of discernment. If you don't have discernment, you're not going to be able to survive the age.
Right?
Okay, well, if anything opened up that age, the assassination was it. Now, as a bitcoiner, this is a huge opportunity for me, which is to say, and I've already seen it, I've already had conversations about this with people before. It was like, oh yeah, you're trying to shill the whatever. Yeah, I heard about that. Okay. Just write it off, it's not a real thing. But now, even had a conversation with the guy last night. It was like, no, no, this is like the Charlie Kirk assassination was pointing to something and Bitcoin has been pointing to that same thing as well. And now there's kind of like this, both sides can see that the other side is pointing to the same thing. The wall between, oh, you guys are just trying to shill us your coin and dump on us or whatever. That's gone now. Now people are like, wait a second, what's the actual thing we're trying to get across? I want to listen to their argument. I want to listen to what's true here. Trying to figure out what's false or whatever it is, right? Consequently, and I'm already seeing it, Bitcoin is making new roads forward through the culture. And oh gosh, what are the ultimate values of Bitcoin? Hard money, low time preferences, all these things that we've railed on this pod for months. All of that is now, there's an opening up on the right that says, wait a second, maybe we do need to evaluate this. Maybe this is the real thing. One of the, again, not to break the grave, but Turning Point USA was founded, and there's a quote about it, but Charlie, I'm founding this to bring the debate to colleges and actually go into the lion's den and actually face, this is where all the absurd and insane ideology comes from at the colleges. Let's go to the colleges. And debate those. Now, there's also videos of Charlie at the colleges being saying verbatim something along the lines of, I have no hope that the collegiate system in America will ever get better or ever get fixed. But as Bitcoiners, we already have hope that it could get better because we know that Bitcoin, the ultimate cause of the ultimate problem that is destroying our colleges is their proximity to the money printer and Bitcoin.
Can I jump in though? Because in a way, I have hope for education, right? Not in a way, I'll just say I have hope for education because education is necessary. And as long as parents have children, they're going to want their kids to be educated. I don't have a lot of hope for the current university system as it's constructed because they have ossified around the money printer. Like the only reason they can exist in their current form with these beautiful buildings and these ridiculous tenure commitments and financial aid structures and all of these things, tuition prices are absolutely insane. The only reason all of those things can exist is because of the money printer, because we make up assets that don't exist and then swap them with people. And then we pretend that that was real. And so in a way, I agree with Charlie Kirk that I don't have a lot of hope for the university system. But I have a lot of hope for a Bitcoin backed education system, which should be significantly better and in the same way that you can only interact with the Bitcoin network, if you're honest with it, that's what should filter out into everything it touches. A Bitcoin backed education system should be, you should only be able to interact with the value of education if you are engaging with truth. And I think that's what the upside of what Bitcoin can offer it.
Yeah.
And like, I mean, to really just bring, like, maybe not bring it home, but like, fiat currency allows it and incentivizes high time preference culture and behavior. What is high time preference culture and behavior? It's don't discern, don't do the research. Just take whatever, like, whatever brainwashing material you're being fed, just consume it and, and don't question it. Like, that's, that's what. And we could, I could spend the whole time going through the actual process of how that happens, but, like, that's, that's the whole thing. And that's what causes all the brainwashing. That's what, like, hey, one of the, one of the planks on the Communist Manifesto is to have a a central bank that can print money and control the credit.
Well.
If you need to ideologically control a population, you got to have to pay for that. And just anybody who goes to an economic school, as Charlie Kirk pointed out, you're not actually learning economics, you're just learning propaganda. You're getting brainwashed into believing that the money printer is the actual source of value and all the rest of that. But now going forward, we have we have Bitcoin and we, like Charlie took the fight to the downstream battlefield. Bitcoiners can take the fight further upstream to the actual central bank. And yeah, Cory, maybe our higher education institutions, they completely collapse under the ability to no longer fund themselves with regards to a Fiat money printer.
This is.
This is nowhere near, you know, probably not in our lifetime. Right. But, like, as we move to a bitcoin standard, those systems will be forced to change.
Yes.
And that gives me a ton of Hope.
Right.
Me too.
And.
Yeah. And it's a forced purification around reality.
Right. Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, I. Yeah. I don't know if Anton, do you have any more thoughts on this?
Just that Bitcoin makes things better in general. There will always be exceptions and specific cases of people who just don't want to be better. So in general, as the world moves towards the Bitcoin standard, it is going to raise the standards for everybody and everything. Does it take away all suffering and all disease, all scammer-y, all sin? No, those things still exist. But in general, it just makes everything better. So an analogy was popping into my head. It's like a filmmaking analogy. And I realized we're an hour and 17 minutes into this podcast, so I don't want to go too deep with this, but I was thinking about AI, how some people when AI became a thing for video creation, they're like, I am going to just make videos purely made out of AI to try to fool people. And they make this garbage AI slop that just looks horrible. Then you have another group of people that say, how can I take the filmmaking that I want to do and elevate it somehow? How do I use these tools to make it better? It takes the exact same amount of hard work. That it would have taken if AI hadn't existed. But now you have an added higher level tools that allow you to make the product that you're making better. But you still have to work just as hard to make that product. You can just make the product better. And that is what Bitcoin does. That's what Bitcoin will do for education. People can still make slop education. People can still have these liberal arts schools that teach things that are nonsense, or they can try to brainwash people with socialism. But when people are empowered and they're not a slave to this fiat mind virus that makes people high time preference, then people have the ability to pursue things that are truly valuable. So yeah, hopefully that analogy makes sense. And yeah, that's it.
That's a good hammer point. I don't know that we needed to overly belabor that. That's why we do the podcast.
Indeed. All right, guys, unless there's any final thoughts, we could. We could call it here.
I'm good.
All right, sounds good. Thank you for joining, everybody. Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk, 1993 to 2025. Peace. Thanks for tuning in to Better By Bitcoin. Bitcoin makes everything. Better, like, subscribe and follow us on X@BetterBYBTC, YouTube@BetterBYBitcoin, not financial advice, mathematical certainty.