Matt Fradd (2:19)

I this is the greatest show on Daily Wire.

Georgia Howe (2:21)

This is why we brought you on.

Matt Fradd (2:23)

Yep, I really have one show that.

Georgia Howe (2:26)

I listen to regularly that's terrific to hear and it kind of amazes us. It's Always. We're always like, what you're talking about.

Matt Fradd (2:32)

When I missed something out there, you're like, you really listen. Like, what do you think? No one listens to you. It's a very popular show. You can do a great job.

Georgia Howe (2:37)

Apparently, some people listen. We love your show, and we wanted to talk to you about your show and this transition on to Daily Wire's platform, what that means for you. It means for your listeners already, your followers, and the new followers you will have from coming on. So we wanted to just discuss that.

Matt Fradd (2:55)

Thank you.

John Bickley (2:55)

So how did you get into podcasting to begin with?

Matt Fradd (2:58)

So it was back in 2007, 16ish, when there was five, precisely five podcasts in the world. I was doing my master's degree in Thomistic philosophy and wanted to get some few extra life credits or something. So I just started an audio podcast from my basement and didn't tell anybody about it. There was 12 episodes in. I hadn't promoted it once, and I had a job at the time, and I was sort of traveling to these conventions, and eventually at these conventions, people would come up and they would randomly be talking to me about this podcast, which made me feel uncomfortable around my. The people who were employing me.

Georgia Howe (3:32)

Fascinating.

Matt Fradd (3:33)

Yeah, I just sort of took off from there, and then I. I quit my job. And my good wife, she's so beautiful. I said to her, what if I quit my job and will make like 25 grand a year and no health insurance? Great plan. She said, all right. Isn't she cool?

Georgia Howe (3:49)

Cameron, so you were in. I'm interested in the grad school part of this. What were you pursuing before you abandoned that totally for podcast?

Matt Fradd (3:58)

No, I didn't. I actually completed my master's degree.

Georgia Howe (4:00)

But for what goal? What purpose?

Matt Fradd (4:02)

Oh, I don't know. I just had a desire to learn about the Catholic faith. So in Australia, at least, when I graduated in the 40s, not a lot of people went to college. So when I moved to America and everybody had been to college, it made me feel insecure, and so I thought I should probably go. So I got my undergrad and master's degree in philosophy, but it was more out of just a desire to understand things that I was interested in.

Georgia Howe (4:27)

So not to be like a professor.

Matt Fradd (4:29)

Or something like that? No, no, nothing like that.

John Bickley (4:31)

Now, have you always been Catholic? Usually when people are very on fire about their Catholicism, yes.

Matt Fradd (4:37)

I think I already told you in a hallway that I was going to give you a rosary.

John Bickley (4:40)

So I'm insufferable. How did you get into it?

Matt Fradd (4:44)

I was an agnostic in my teenage years. I thought that God was something that people believed in because they were afraid of death, which is what explained older people being really into it. I didn't think there were any good reasons to think God existed. I had a handful of objections to God's existence that I don't think are at all good anymore. When I was 17 years old, my mum came home from Holy Mass and invited me to go to World Youth Day, which was an event in Rome, Italy. And there was 2.5 million young people who went, isn't that bananas? It's the largest gathering in European history. So I went because I just thought I'd love to go see another country. I've had no luck with these Australian sheilas. Maybe there's, you know. So I went for that reason. And I was just. I encountered young Catholic Christians who knew what they believed and were happy and normal and not cynical and sarcastic. And it was very inspiring. And I sort of began to pray, Jesus, if you exist, reveal yourself to me in a way that I could understand. And I came home from that trip just so happy. It would make you sick. Just way too much.

Georgia Howe (5:51)

You could never be too much.

Matt Fradd (5:53)

No way. My mom, I think, preferred it when I was like an angsty, agnostic kid. I came home like, I love you, Mum. I don't know why I have an American accent. I love you, mom. And I just, I'll pray for you. And it was awful.

Georgia Howe (6:04)

So your conversion begins appropriately in Rome.

Matt Fradd (6:07)

Yeah.

Georgia Howe (6:08)

Do you think that has a lot to do with ultimately being a Catholic? We're both Protestants here. For you. Catholicism, White Catholicism specifically. What drew you to that?

Matt Fradd (6:20)

Yeah, no, for sure. If I had my conversion experience at a Baptist camp, I probably would have ended up Baptist. Right. When I came home from Rome, the only Christians who were serious about their faith were Protestant Christians. And they had a lot of objections to the Catholic faith. And so when they would offer objections, sometimes they would rattle me and I would try to see if there were any good biblical answers. And I think that there are. So the reason I'm a Catholic is I think that God exists. I think that Jesus Christ is the long awaited Messiah, the second person of the Blessed Trinity. And I think that he established a church and gave that church authority. And I think the only church whose lineage can be traced back to the time of Christ and the Apostles is the Catholic Church. It doesn't go back to Zwingli or Luther or John smith in the 17th century or whoever else. Joseph Smith. And so that's why I'm a Catholic.

Georgia Howe (7:11)

So one of the themes we've talked about is this sense of sort of splintering culturally, especially younger generations feeling like they don't know where to look for authority. And to me, even as a Protestant, this is the major appeal for Catholicism. Where there is a tradition, there is a sense of stability over the generations.

Matt Fradd (7:36)

A catechism that you can turn to know exactly what the Church has always taught.

Georgia Howe (7:39)

The most fascinating history of anything on the planet, because it goes all the way back to Rome, which I love. But all of that stuff, I mean, there's a. There's a major appeal here, and we've seen it with even our. Our talent. We have more Catholics than anything else in this. In this company, but we've seen it with younger listeners, a lot of Catholics. Clearly there's a movement toward Catholicism. What have you seen from your end?

Matt Fradd (8:05)

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think we're sort of, as a culture, maybe hungover from the fever dream that was the new atheism that promised us the ascendancy of reason as God was vanquished and then men could have periods, and maybe we collectively woke up and went, oh, no, something terrible has gone wrong. So there seems to be a desire to not mock our traditions, to not mock the inheritance that the west has received. And I think one of the appeals of the Catholic Church is its steadfastness on sexual. Sexual ethics. So the beauty of sexuality and why sex is only within marriage. Where contraception is condemned, sodomy is condemned, self abuse is condemned. But precisely because sex is good. If sex wasn't good, you couldn't make it bad. If sex wasn't beautiful, you couldn't make it ugly. You can't make ugly things ugly. You can't kick over a pile of trash and make it uglier, but you can make a beautiful thing very ugly. Yeah, so in a way, I think it's like a roundabout argument that sex can be made so ugly that it ought to be beautiful. So I think there's that, and then I think there's just a desire for tradition. I don't want to be entertained when I go to church. But anyway, I think the primary reason people should be Catholic is if they think it's true. Not because the priest is interesting, not because you like the current pontiff, but because you think this is the church Christ established, and I want to be a part of that church. Even though Matt Fred's a part of it or something.

Georgia Howe (9:39)

Yeah, it's a major Stumbling block for a lot of people.

John Bickley (9:41)

I'm sure you've been in this movement, you said, since 2016, and in that span of time is when we've seen this renewed interest in Christianity specifically.

Matt Fradd (9:51)

It's all because of me.

John Bickley (9:51)

Yeah, Specifically Catholicism. So just, I'm guessing from your vantage point, you probably get people emailing you. Have you noticed an increase in interest, specifically in Catholicism? An uptick of people reaching out and asking questions? What have you seen?

Matt Fradd (10:08)

A thousand percent. Yeah, I get emails all the time. Wherever I go. It's. I was on. I was in Split in Croatia recently, just walking down the street, minding my own business and someone drove by and went, Matt Frad. And I thought, that's bananas. Yeah. People in Austrian airports who listen to the show and things like this. I think there is a desire to have our hunger for God treated with sufficient seriousness. And so there's something very appealing about Eastern Orthodoxy, which has an ancient tradition and Catholicism, either Roman or Eastern Catholicism, that we want to go somewhere where there is reverence, somewhere we can, as it were, kiss the earth. And we don't want our hunger for God, which is terribly intimate and serious and meaningful, to be patronized with non stop words, jokes or tacky music. There's a desire to tap into. Yeah. Beautiful things. That beauty is objective, like, so Gregorian chant is objectively more beautiful than a rock band. And if you disagree with me, you're wrong. And I think there's a recognition of that. And in our banal, modernist, solipsistic society, there's a desire to kind of reunite with what we all collectively dismissed. Something like that. And I also just think there's a pragmatic reason to be a Christian, and that is you will be happier if you don't have compelling reasons to think that Christianity is true and you don't have compelling reasons to think atheism is true. And if the arguments for each are, in your estimation, on par, then I think there's still a pragmatic reason to choose to believe Christianity. If your options are a meaningless universe that was coughed into existence by a blind cosmic process in which I find myself now tied to this, in this corner of this vast expanse for a brief moment before I'm extinguished forever and there's no meaning and that's it. And then you have the Christian story. If I'm not like, if the argument for atheism is better, then you should probably. You're within your epistemic rights to go along with atheism. But if they're equal and you can't decide. I think just choosing this, the Christian view is a better idea, because if you're wrong, you'll still be happier and you'll never know that you were wrong. That sounds like I'm saying there aren't compelling reasons to be a Christian. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just addressing the subjective element of the individual who's assessing two different worldviews. And so I think Jordan Peterson was something of a gateway drug into Christianity. We stopped mocking it and we sort of went, okay, I'll. I'll give it a hearing. Blaise Pascal was a 17th century French philosopher, and he made famously his wager, which I kind of laid out there. But his point was, if you can't believe in Christianity and you want to do the sorts of things that Christians do, take holy water, Genuflex, say your prayers, read the Scriptures, talk to God as if he were real, and you may come to decide that he is. And that's sort of what I did in Rome. God, if you exist, would you reveal yourself to me in a way that even I could understand?

Georgia Howe (13:32)

One of my favorite themes is narcissism.

Matt Fradd (13:35)

That seems to be everybody's favorite theme.

Georgia Howe (13:37)

Why is it your favorite theme? You see it impacting our culture big time right now.

Matt Fradd (13:44)

What does it mean? I think I know, but people keep.

Georgia Howe (13:46)

Talking about it true narcissism. Like there's a clinical version of narcissism where you look around and all you see is yourself reflected in the world. And everything comes back to how you can use this situation to improve whatever your goal is. Currently, this is narcissism. Everything feeds it. And what you have now is you have a lot of people with a lot of, you know, with mics, a lot of people with a lot of influence where they're likely to gravitate toward places that their voice can be heard. These. These types of. And one of the things, for me, with Christianity built into it, you just described some of it, but the community element of it, the forcing yourself out of yourself to give reverence to something beyond yourself, first of all, but also like to do that with other people.

Matt Fradd (14:40)

Yes.

Georgia Howe (14:41)

To be in the pews with other people. Yes.

Matt Fradd (14:44)

Other annoying people like you.

Georgia Howe (14:46)

Honestly. Yes.

Matt Fradd (14:47)

Yes. Really quite difficult, I think a lot of us. And maybe there's this emerging scene now where, I don't know, I haven't looked into it, but maybe people aren't going to church. Instead, we're scrolling our Instagram feeds looking at monks with beards and great cathedrals. And it gives us a feeling of spirituality. But we never have to interact with the riff raff. And it's really important and good for us to have to deal with the poverty of other people. How they look, how they dress, how they sneeze behind you, and you wish they were excommunicated just for that alone. All of these things. I think it is important and you can't dictate.

Georgia Howe (15:20)

I mean, when you're, when you're choosing on your feed, which you listen to all this stuff, it is a self serving, solipsistic existence. You go there and you got to listen to whatever the, the sermon's going to be on or the, whatever the mass is focused on, be around these other people, interact with them, just that. And, and then the idea of this is, this is part of the mission statement, the literal mission statement of the church in general. And all Christian churches, if they're a good church at all, should be evangelizing, speaking to other people, sharing your faith. It is constructed in a way that gets you outside of yourself, you know, and I feel like, oh my gosh, does our culture need it badly? And I feel like the rise of your podcast and other podcasts that also deal directly with very spiritual issues, hopefully that's a, you know, it's a good sign, I think, for our culture.

John Bickley (16:20)

Well, something that's very appealing about Catholicism just to piggyback on that is the ritual of the weekly Mass, plus confession, plus the various sacraments that it forces you to. It's very humble in that everyone has to do it and it pulls you back in week after week. Even if you go through dry spells where you're like, oh, I don't know about this, I don't know how I feel about my spirituality. If there are built in rituals that kind of bring you back, that you humble yourself to, you can weather some of those dry patches much better. And there's a real wisdom in that. I mean, sometimes you'll hear Protestants say, like, you know, it's. Catholics say, it's the works that save you. Just because they encourage you to do those works doesn't mean that they're salvific. There's a wisdom in making people do weekly rituals because that's what carries you through when you go through the seasons of life question.

Matt Fradd (17:15)

It's sort of like date nights with your wife. With my wife, Right. Like, if I only dated my wife when I felt this overwhelming desire for intimacy with her, it would still be every day. It would still be every day. It would be less frequently if, you know, if I expected to feel the same way I felt when we first kissed or something like this all the time. This is unreasonable. But what we do is we bake into our life moments of encounter so that we can strengthen that relationship, even if the feelings come and go. I think maybe that's kind of what you're saying, and I want you to ask that question. I don't mean to interrupt you, but to the point of confession. There's something so beautiful about having to kneel before a man who stands in the place of God and accuse yourself. My fear in this modern age, where we're so divided, is that we would seek to use religion as a club to mock and scorn and beat our political and ideological opponents. But what we should be doing is be in constant repentance. A prayer I pray every day is from Isaac. No, St. Ephraim the Syrian, who says, you know, part of the prayer is, lord, if I have made fun of my brother's sin when my own faults are countless, have mercy, my Lord and God, on me, your wretched and unworthy servant. So talk about an antidote for narcissism.

John Bickley (18:28)

Now, you're Australian. I don't generally think of Australia as a particularly religious place, but maybe you can flesh that out a little bit. Is Catholicism more popular there, or were you sort of unique?

Matt Fradd (18:40)

Yeah, it's a very secular country, for sure. I remember when I moved to the States because my wife's from here, going into Walmart and seeing, like, Christian T shirts. It's so bizarre, this. This crossover between Christianity and America. Maybe it's fine, but it still makes me uncomfortable because it's not the culture from which I came. So, no, Catholicism is not big. There are beautiful pockets of Catholicism in Australia. We have a hero of the faith, George Cardinal Pell, who has since gone onto his reward. He was attacked and maligned by the secular media because of his Catholic stances on sexual topics and other things. And he was a champion for many. And I think he's the reason that there are many good priests, say, in Melbourne and Sydney and other places, but there have definitely been some shining lights in Australia.

John Bickley (19:31)

Now, we often say that Christianity thrives under persecution, and I'm not sure if you'd say that there's persecution necessarily in Australia, but certainly being socially ostracized in some way can be a form of that. Would you say that the pockets of Christianity in Australia are strong and devout for that reason, or how would you describe that dynamic?

Matt Fradd (19:52)

Yeah, it reminds me of Tertullian's line that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. And I understand your hesitancy to apply martyrdom in any sense to maybe what we're going through today when there are real Christians being really slaughtered by enemies of the Church. But I do think there's something to that. That Christianity shouldn't just enable me to live sort of fat and happy. If I'm really living the faith, if I'm not going along with the slander of others, if I'm not engaging in deviant sexual activity, if I'm more concerned with my own sin than that of others, if I'm not cheating and stealing and lying, and if I'm really trying to love my wife and children, well, like, in a way that. That. Not just in a way. I think that puts you at odds with the spirit of the world. And when you see how the New Testament authors speak about the world, it's pretty frightening. I think it was John who said, if you're a friend of the. To be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God.

Georgia Howe (20:50)

That's always trouble.

Matt Fradd (20:50)

Terrifying. It troubles me, too. And I don't want to be that. Now. That doesn't mean to close myself off from the world, to use that word again in a sort of solipsistic sense, but to realize that Christianity is a story of war and the lives that we live are in a battlefield. And the reason our life so often doesn't make sense to us, I think, is that we've bought into a different narrative. Like maybe this is Survivor or Sex in the City or some other show. But no, we live in a world at war, and we have to take seriously those three enemies that John talks about. The world, the flesh and the devil, and be vigilant and be on guard against it.

Georgia Howe (21:38)

I want to talk specifically about your show.

Matt Fradd (21:40)

Okay.

Georgia Howe (21:41)

Your vision for your show. And does your vision change at all coming on board here at Daily Wire?

Matt Fradd (21:46)

Yeah. No, my vision is the same as it has always been. I want to preach Jesus Christ and win the world for Jesus Christ. And I want to invite every. Everybody to join Holy Mother Church, the Catholic Church. And I want them to remain Catholic despite the stupid people like myself and others who exist within it. I think there's a temptation. The reason I keep saying things like that is I think there's a temptation that if I'm part of a church with, like, immoral, stupid people, then I'll leave it and find another one, you know, And. But the thing is, if you. If. If you ever do find a perfect church, which you won't, once you join it, it won't be. So you may as well just join the biggest church. Sorry, maybe not. That's not a good argument for Catholicism, but I think Catholicism has clearly a lot of issues, clearly a lot of scandal, clearly a lot of ignorant people like myself. But I want people to be Catholic because I think it's the truest form of Christianity. And I don't say that in a sort of triumphalist, sort of sneering way at all. That's just what I think is the case. So that's been the point of the show and it remains the point. But I have in the past and will continue to occasionally interview beautiful people from different Christian denominations who have inspired me, like Dr. William Ann Craig. I've had John Eldridge on the show, who's a dear friend and a Protestant. I've had Orthodox friends of mine on the show, such as Derek Cummins and others. So that's been the point of the show and it'll continue to be. And that was. That was the thing I had to really hammer out with Daily Wire. I couldn't understand why they would want a Catholic show. I was afraid they wanted a bland Christian show that wouldn't offend any of their Christian audience. So when. When people assured me, no, we just want you to have full creative control and to keep doing what you're doing, once I was convinced of that, I was really excited.

Georgia Howe (23:36)

How do you choose the guest that you invite on?

Matt Fradd (23:40)

I don't have a good poker face, so if someone doesn't interest me, I. It's terrible. My kids have a code word when. When I look disinterested, they'll say, dad, blueberries. That's the word, blueberries. And that's to signal to me that I look like I'd rather be dead than talking to this person. It's awful. I wish I was. I'm trying to be better at it. So I only interview people I want to talk to. So when. Maybe when issues come up in culture that I think needs to be addressed, like errors of feminism, say, or Muhammadism or Mormonism. But I hope, hopefully it's from a point of view where it's also edifying. It's not just about bashing other. Like, for example, I've got a fellow coming on the show who was a faithful Jew and he became Catholic, and so I want all Jews to become Catholic and so. But it's not in a sense where we're Looking down our nose at people. It's just him sharing his story and that sort of sense.

Georgia Howe (24:36)

My next question was, can you convert Ben Shapiro?

Matt Fradd (24:40)

No. No, I cannot, but the Holy Spirit might.

Georgia Howe (24:42)

Politics.

Matt Fradd (24:44)

What is that?

Georgia Howe (24:45)

Do you try to avoid politics?

Matt Fradd (24:47)

I do. Only because I think nobody has an appetite to hear me give my half baked political opinions. It's more due to my incompetency than a restriction imposed by me or the Daily Wire. Do you know what I mean? I don't know. I love listening to y' all speak about politics in the morning, just to kind of get a sense of where things are at. But I do worry that many of us choose to distract ourselves from our interior life, from our own poverty, you know, from our own emptiness and sadness. And listening to politics 247 seems to be an effective way of sort of distracting me from more important things. Politics is an important thing, for sure. But my wife is more important. God is more important. My children are more important. And I want to be fully present to them. So I do worry that sometimes we can idolize politics. And it's, you know, like, how many hours do you spend a week reading scripture? How many hours a week do you spend listening to your favorite political podcaster? Now maybe that's okay if you listen to politics more, I don't know. But it's. It's a question I think should make us uncomfortable.

Georgia Howe (25:51)

It's probably. It's actually part of the vision of Morning Wire, where we thought, you know, the. In a. In a healthy way, the average person. 15 minutes is pretty good in terms of. I can do that. I'm not obsessing about the politics, but I can get the big stories and move on with my life for the most part. And that is part of the thought. But I have this. I mean, Georgia and I, we all talk about this where we have to be in the news more than we want to be in the news. And it's a relief to listen to other things. The rest is history podcast. I love it because I'm just not listening to today's politics or whatever or a book on tape. But anyhow, I think a lot of people want a break from the news for sure.

John Bickley (26:32)

So I think a lot of your fans might be thinking you're joining Daily Wire. They might be a little worried that things about your content will change. Is there anything about your show that will change once you start up at Daily Wire or an even format?

Matt Fradd (26:47)

Yeah, well, I have to wear a yarmulke, which was weird, I thought. But they said well, look, the pogue wears one and just pretend it's for that reason. And I said, fine. No, no. Yeah, it's a great question. If some podcaster that I had followed joined some bigger company, I too would be concerned and worried. And I think that's totally reasonable. That's why I said earlier that I was so concerned about making sure I had editorial control. And actually, one of the first things I said to Caleb was, well, I don't want to talk to any politicians or anything. And he went, yeah, nobody, nobody wants you to do that. That insulting and relieving, I think.

Georgia Howe (27:29)

Yeah, that's good. Before Matt was. You do have a new studio.

Matt Fradd (27:33)

So beautiful. Yes, it's Matt Walsh's old studio. I said, he has to be fired or I don't come on. And it looks beautiful. I'm really excited about it and they've done an excellent job. It's. It's very. I don't like the word cozy. I don't think men should use that word. But it's very cozy and masculine and musky.

Georgia Howe (27:52)

I don't know.

Matt Fradd (27:52)

Is that there'll be a lot of cigars smoke in there, probably. So I'm just so excited. One of my favorite things to do when people ask me, what do you do for fun? It's very boring. I like to talk to people. I like to read books and talk to people. So this job kind of lets me do what I want to do.

John Bickley (28:06)

Anyway, first, when does your first episode with Daily Wire air and who's going to be your first guest?

Matt Fradd (28:11)

Thank you. Yeah. So we had our sort of preemptive show release in December, which was our Christmas episode in which I interviewed a biblical scholar about why Christ was the long awaited Messiah. So people should check that out if they haven't. But the first episode officially will be in around mid January, and I will be interviewing a friend of mine, Dr. Brant Petra, about the historicity of the New Testament, Christ's claims to be divine, and these sorts of issues. So it'll be a really nerdy biblical episode that I can't wait to have and I think a lot of people will enjoy.

Georgia Howe (28:44)

Love it. Love. Nerdy. We love you. Thanks for coming on.

Matt Fradd (28:47)

You got it.

John Bickley (28:49)

All right, Matt, thank you so much.

Matt Fradd (28:50)

Thanks.

John Bickley (28:51)

That was Matt Fradd, host of Pints with Aquinas, launching soon on Daily Wire plus, and this has been a special edition of Morning Wire.