JONI TABLE TALK | JUNE 21st, 2026

Summary

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Podcast Summary: JONI TABLE TALK | JUNE 21st, 2026

Podcast: Real America’s Voice

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This dual-segment episode of Joni Table Talk dives deep into two major discussions:

1. The importance and redefining of healthy masculinity—especially biblical masculinity—in today’s culture, featuring actor and author Kody Bobe.
2. The intersection of science and faith, and the reality of the mind and soul, featuring renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor.

Across both segments, the guests and hosts share personal testimonies, unravel cultural misconceptions, and passionately invite listeners to consider the spiritual dimension of identity, purpose, and destiny.

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Segment 1: Redefining Masculinity with Kody Bobe

(03:05–29:27)

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Current Crisis of Masculinity

• Joni Lamb introduces the show by acknowledging cultural confusion and attacks on masculinity, particularly from modern feminist narratives, and stresses the need for strong Christian men.
• April Osteen Simons and Rachel Lamb Brown agree, reflecting on the impact of fathers and biblical male role models.
  • “There has been an attack on masculinity on our men, and they have been told that they are the problem for everything in society. And it's true. It's caused, you know, a massive, massive problem, especially with our young men.”
    (04:24 – Rachel Lamb Brown)

Kody Bobe’s Journey: From Brokenness to Biblical Manhood

• Kody shares candidly about being raised in a broken home, his time in the Navy, and struggles with worldly highs like partying and addiction.
• His pivotal spiritual encounter:
  • “I took a Bible I didn’t know the author of...I got on my knees and said, God, if you're real, I'm in.”
    (11:34 – Kody Bobe)
• The immediate emotional transformation:
  • “It was like the greatest high in every fiber of my being...Sometimes when you're worshiping God, at times, you'll feel His presence physically. And that’s what I felt.”
    (12:57 – Kody Bobe)

Deliverance, Discipline & New Life

• Kody describes instant deliverance from tempers and unforgiveness. Addictions required both supernatural breakthrough and practical discipline.
• Emphasis is placed on discipleship, accountability, and the journey of sanctification post-salvation.
• Kody’s discipline: Rapid baptism, inviting Navy friends, some of whom also became Christians.
  • “We had like 35, 40 guys show up with me to church, and I think eight of them got saved at my baptism, which was super cool.”
    (15:28 – Kody Bobe)

Biblical Masculinity Explained

• The group asserts that biblical masculinity is modeled on Jesus: combining courage, sacrifice, servitude, and love.
• Kody highlights the difference between the world’s definition and the Christian example.
  • “The picture of masculinity is found in Jesus...Kindness and love and servitude—and also, being that man of courage…going home and being willing to lay down your life for your wife.”
    (06:17, 07:19 – Kody Bobe, Joni Lamb)
• Honest talk about addiction, particularly pornography, and the need for open confession and support among men.
  • “I didn't know that there was a culture of hiding sin. Like, I just blurted it out...And a lot of them in the church didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with X-rated conversations. But that’s where the Lord propelled me on my journey...”
    (22:27 – Kody Bobe)

The Soul Con Challenge and Practical Steps

• Kody explains his book, Soul Con Challenge, designed to help men fight spiritual battles, build discipline, and redefine masculinity within a biblical framework.
  • “If you have a struggle with an addiction, it's a spiritual battle…And the only way to win is Christ, who already won that war for us.”
    (28:06 – Kody Bobe)
• Practical accountability elements: daily push-ups, fasting, and brotherhood.

Marriage, Purity & Delayed Rewards

• Kody shares the miraculous and redeeming story of meeting his wife, Haley, and walking out purity despite a troubled past.
  • “The next girl I dated was actually my wife...No sex, nothing, until we got married...almost 19 and a half years and sex with one woman.”
    (27:22 – Kody Bobe)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Hope isn’t just an idea, an esoteric concept. He has a name, and it’s Jesus.”
  (29:08 – Kody Bobe)
• “You can date a boy, or you can date a man, or you can date a godly man. There’s three categories.”
  (21:21 – Joni Lamb)

Important Timestamps

• [03:05] Introduction of masculinity topic
• [06:17] Kody Bobe on biblical masculinity
• [11:34] Kody’s salvation testimony
• [15:28] Baptism and impact on friends
• [20:24] Overcoming addictions, discipline, & accountability
• [27:22] Story of marriage, purity, & family
• [28:06] Outline of the Soul Con Challenge
• [29:08] Kody’s final encouragement to men

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Segment 2: Science, the Mind, and the Soul with Dr. Michael Egnor

(35:05–62:08)

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dr. Michael Egnor’s Background & Conversion from Atheism

• Raised without faith, Egnor details his scientific curiosity and early atheism, believing that being an atheist equated to being “smart.”
  • “I thought that to be atheist was to be smart...I wasn’t hostile to Christianity—I thought it was a beautiful story—I thought it was a myth.”
    (37:43 – Dr. Egnor)
• Recounts a moving, supernatural experience in a hospital chapel when praying for his autistic son:
  • “I heard a voice…say, ‘But that’s what you’re doing to Me.’”
    (41:18 – Dr. Egnor)
• This moment led to his conversion and immediate baptism.

Science Affirming the Existence of God

• Shared personal struggles with the limits of materialist science—particularly when confronted with the complexity and origin of life.
• Presents three major scientific proofs for God’s existence:
  1. The Big Bang: Indicates a clear beginning, in line with Genesis.
     • “The Big Bang confirmed Genesis in a powerful way. Let there be light was an explosion of energy.”
       (46:32 – Dr. Egnor)
  2. The Anthropic Principle: The universe is fine-tuned for life, suggesting deliberate design.
     • “There are over 100 different constants in physics...If they were slightly different, we would never have come here. Life wouldn’t be possible.”
       (47:03 – Dr. Egnor)
  3. The Genetic Code: DNA is a sophisticated, purposeful information system unexplainable by unguided material processes.
     • “DNA is more sophisticated than any computer code...Who wrote the code?”
       (48:09 – Dr. Egnor)

Neurosurgery and the Evidence for Soul/Mind

• Dr. Egnor: The mind is not simply a product of the brain.
• Surgical experience revealed:
  • People remain “themselves,” even after removal of key brain parts.
  • Mind exhibits attributes—reason, free will—that cannot be induced or explained by the brain alone.
    • “There’s never been a case in recorded medical history of stimulating the brain and getting someone to use reason or free will.”
      (52:58 – Dr. Egnor)

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs): Evidence of the Soul

• Over 20 million Americans have had NDEs; consistent, transformative aftereffects.
• Four features of NDEs:
  1. Enhanced clarity and perception;
  2. Out-of-body, verifiable observations;
  3. Encounters only with the deceased;
  4. Deep transformation and loss of fear of death.
• Famous case: Pam Reynolds’s standstill operation, during which she had verifiable out-of-body observations despite clinical death.
  • “She saw everything…She repeated to him the conversations, what the doctors were saying…when she was brain dead.”
    (57:02 – Dr. Egnor)

The Nature of the Soul

• The soul is metaphysically simple—cannot die or disintegrate—proving natural immortality.
  • “When you think about it, what happens when we think of death...every atom in our body goes somewhere. Our soul, our spirit is not made of little particles…Our spirit cannot die unless God chose to just take us out of existence, but He wouldn’t do that.”
    (58:12 – Dr. Egnor)

Mind Over Matter: The Power of Thoughts

• Spiritual practices, especially prayer, possess healing and transforming powers beyond what science (or pills) can offer for mental struggles like anxiety or depression.
  • “Prayer is enormously effective…better than any pill.”
    (61:43 – Dr. Egnor)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “If people who claim that science points away from a creator are not telling the truth about the science, the science overwhelmingly confirms God’s existence.”
  (44:51 – Dr. Egnor)
• “Reason and science and truth is on Christians is on the Christian side.”
  (44:16 – Dr. Egnor)
• “We try to make the point that science and Christianity tell the same truth: reality is not materialistic and it’s not atheistic.”
  (61:56 – Dr. Egnor)

Important Timestamps

• [35:05] Introduction to Dr. Michael Egnor’s story
• [41:18] Supernatural encounter leading to faith
• [45:26] Three scientific proofs for God’s existence
• [51:14] Neurosurgery and the mind-brain distinction
• [54:18] Patterns and case studies of near-death experiences
• [58:08] The metaphysical nature and immortality of the soul
• [61:43] The transformative power of prayer

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Masculinity: The episode boldly reframes masculinity through a biblical lens emphasizing courage, self-sacrifice, and daily discipline, while offering hope for men to become godly husbands, fathers, and leaders.
• Science & Faith: Dr. Egnor’s expertise bridges the gap between science and spirituality, asserting that science—far from undermining faith—actually points to the reality of God, the soul, and eternal life.
• Salvation & Transformation: Both segments end with simple, heartfelt invitations to faith and prayer, underscoring the show’s core message: spiritual renewal is available to all, regardless of background or circumstance.

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For Further Engagement

• Kody Bobe’s Book: Soul Con Challenge: Put Down Your Fork, Pick Up Your Cross (Available online)
• Dr. Michael Egnor’s Book: The Immortal Mind (theimmortalmind.org)
• Free copy of the Gospel of John for new believers offered via the program's prayer line
• Follow Joni Table Talk and Real America’s Voice on all social media and podcast platforms for more content and episodes

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Transcript

[Joni Lamb]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Guaranteed Human Hi, it's Karen and Georgia

[Karen Kilgariff]

from My favorite Murder.

[Georgia Hardstark]

We cruised around LA in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Want the full story? Take a listen.

[Georgia Hardstark]

She starts dating Howard Hughes and in fact she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy and Lamar and Billie

[Kody Bobe]

Jean King, presented by The Hyundai Ioniq 5.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Goodbye.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless Way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. We okay one judgment anyway, give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] on new troil podcast

[Newt Gingrich]

we're celebrating America's 250th birthday and I asked my guests how they're spending their 4th of July.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Brett Baer I will be working. I'll be in Washington because it's a big, big day.

[Jared Isaacman]

Jared Isaacman I plan to be flying in an F5 fighter jet painted in Freedom 250 colors, along with four other fighter jets flying over the nation's capital.

[Newt Gingrich]

Listen to Newts world on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

[Jack Armstrong]

Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand? We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure this crazy modern world.

[Karen Kilgariff]

How about something about a comedic tone?

[Jack Armstrong]

We have a winner. Yes, listen to Armstrong and Yeti on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[J.R. Martinez]

As America marks its 250th anniversary, we're looking back at two and a half centuries of rebellion and liberty through the eyes of the heroes who defended it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The whole thing about this country is freedom. If we're not careful, we could lose that.

[J.R. Martinez]

On Medal of Stories of Courage, we bring you the defining moments of valor that went above and beyond the call of duty. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Joni Lamb]

Well, in an age where masculinity is under fool assault, it's more important than ever that the men in the body of Christ exemplify leadership, humility, faith, and strength. Well, today we're going to introduce you to a bold challenge that will help shape boys into men, and men into the leaders and fathers we need them to be. But before we get to that, join me around the table is someone who had an amazing father. I did.

[April Osteen Simons]

I did.

[Joni Lamb]

What was his quote? John Osteen had such a good quote.

[April Osteen Simons]

He would say, the thing great it is to dream the dream when you stand in youth by the starry stream. But a greater thing is to fight life through and say, in the end, the dream is true.

[Joni Lamb]

So good. So he was great. You know, what an influence he was in your life?

[April Osteen Simons]

Oh, my goodness, Huge. He's probably the number one. I mean, my mom was his number one influence. Just taught me about God, just by the way he lived.

[Joni Lamb]

And now John and Dodie Osteen are both in heaven.

[April Osteen Simons]

They're gone. Can't believe it.

[Joni Lamb]

I said to you, because she hasn't been gone that long. And I said, april, do you still, like, go to the phone or think I'm going to call?

[April Osteen Simons]

I just did. Marla just did. And we should go to Dorothy now.

[Joni Lamb]

It's getting me. Oh, it's going to get Dorothy.

[April Osteen Simons]

Yeah.

[Joni Lamb]

If we talk about both of them.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

For sure.

[Joni Lamb]

How are you doing today? Doing really good. Happy to be here. We love testimonies, don't we? Oh, yes, we do. The power of God. There's no limit to it. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Rachel Lamb Brown, how are you doing?

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

I'm doing good. I'm really excited we're talking about this. There has been an attack on masculinity on our men, and they have been told that they are the problem for everything in society. And it's true. It's caused, you know, a massive, massive problem, especially with our young men. And so I'm glad that there is somebody who is rising up and saying, hey, yeah, it's time to meet men again.

[Joni Lamb]

So good. That's so good. Rebecca Lamb Weiss. How are you?

[April Osteen Simons]

I'm good.

[Cody Bobe]

I also had a great dad.

[Joni Lamb]

Yes, you did. He's in heaven.

[Cody Bobe]

He's in heaven. And he was a great. Another great example of someone who was able to be bold and a strong leader, but also have a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit and wasn't afraid of his emotions or feelings. And so I feel like that's such a great thing to show to talk about what is biblical masculinity?

[Joni Lamb]

Yeah. So, so good. So good. He's an actor as well as the creator and author of Soul Con Challenge. Please welcome Cody Bobe. Come on in, Cody. We got you some good music to walk into.

[Cody Bobe]

Hello.

[Jared Isaacman]

Hello.

[Joni Lamb]

Hi there.

[Kody Bobe]

Thanks for having me.

[Cody Bobe]

Good.

[Joni Lamb]

Good to have you ready to take on all these women at the table.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm ready.

[Joni Lamb]

Okay. Okay. Today we see many voices trying to shape what defines masculinity. Modern day feminists call almost all normal masculinity toxic. Some push masculinity that is passive and quiet. But what does the Bible say? Well, today, with the help of our guests, we're going to find out what strong, healthy masculinity looks like and why it's needed. I was just watching something on Instagram. I was scrolling through. I don't spend a lot of time, but every once in a while and there was a guy interviewing a woman and she was blaming everything on the male society for every problem that we have. And I was like, wow. And especially it's a charge against biblical masculinity. Talk a little bit about that.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. Well, I love what the Bible says about masculinity and I love that God created it. And I tell people all the time, the picture of masculinity is found in Jesus life on this earth. So if you want to know what actual masculinity looks like, it's Jesus, which

[Joni Lamb]

would include kindness and love and servitude

[Kody Bobe]

and all servant's heart and going home and being building a whip himself and then clearing people out for doing evil in his father's house. Like, that's a really cool picture. And you have this picture of perfect masculinity. And I feel like what's happened in our world today is that we've got so confused because Christ isn't on the throne of what we're looking at masculinity through. And when we do that, we start to understand. I was raised in a broken home, so my picture masculinity was really confused until I read the Bible. And Now I have two teenagers in my house and a wife of over 19 years. And I see that biblical masculinity is actually the solution to most problems that you're Facing inside this country.

[Joni Lamb]

Yeah. But biblical masculinity is going home and being willing to lay down your life for your wife. I mean. Yeah, it's the opposite of what the world thinks it is.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. It's being that man of courage that we see. And so I'm an action actor, and I love bringing action movies to life. It's amazing. Well, everybody can relate with an action movie of, like, we want the good guy to destroy evil and save the female.

[Joni Lamb]

Were you the good guy or the bad guy?

[Kody Bobe]

Well, in my next film called Savage, I play this former Special Forces character, Gin.

[Joni Lamb]

Of course you do.

[Kody Bobe]

But I was the good guy that sees a bad situation happen and then takes care of the evil by killing every bad guy, of course. And then saving the female.

[Joni Lamb]

My husband loves movies like that, so it's so fun. We'll be loving that.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. So it's really cool.

[Joni Lamb]

So let's go back and just tell a little bit of your story. Yeah. Talk about growing up a broken home, that was hard, right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

For sure.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, that was for sure hard. To everybody with a broken home, it's a really difficult thing. And I'm 40 years old, so when I was raised, it was really socially not as common as it is today. I was raised with my dad and my brother, and I'd see my mom on visitation, but I wanted to be a good person my whole life. Like, I had this desire to be a good person. But then I'd see families that were, like, put together and be like, oh. And then they'd ask me, like, hey, what do your parents do? Like, oh, I live with my dad. And then immediately people were like, oh, there's something wrong with this kid. He lives with his dad. Why does his dad have full custody of him? And then there would be that. Like, I'd be an outcast immediately. And I started to. At 13, I was kind of fed up with the outcast mentality, and I found my identity as a partier. I was really great at a few things, and partying and spending time with women were things I found.

[Joni Lamb]

Things you were good at.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Did you have a good relationship with your dad? Like, was he a good model of masculinity?

[Kody Bobe]

Oh, yeah. There's so much that was good, and I want to honor him always with that. But Christ wasn't the king of his heart, so that's a huge difference. Yeah. Yeah. So, again, it makes all the difference. Right. So if you want to be a masculine, strong man and Christ isn't the king, which I found out when I was 18. How drastically that changes. A struggle with alcohol can be your king. A struggle with sex can be your king. And that desire. And I saw the brokenness of that growing up and I was like, man, I want to be something else. And I couldn't have the strength to do whatever. I just fell into that same mentality of I was the guy that after a fight that I would be in, I'd be like throwing up by myself. Because the sound of it just, you know, it just made me sick. You'd win a fight and you'd go home, or you'd lose a fight and you'd go home and I would just get sick with it and I'd try to drink to erase my memory.

[Joni Lamb]

And so eventually you saw a sign about how to be a. Yeah, the

[Kody Bobe]

Navy had this thing that said, be someone special. And I was out to breakfast with my mom. My mom and I and my dad, we all have a great. Sorry. I have a great relationship with them individually. They don't talk, but that's different. But I was out to breakfast with her. I was 18. And it said, be someone special, United States Navy. And I'm like, I could do that. I've been physically fit my whole life. So, yeah, I went into the Navy and thought that was going to cure my problem of being a bad person. So.

[Joni Lamb]

And so then at was it 19, something miraculous happened as far as kind of open up your heart.

[Kody Bobe]

I was. Yeah, I was still 18 and I was in the military at the time. I was active duty. And it was March 23, 2004. So we went, me and all my buddies.

[Joni Lamb]

There's more to that. It was March 2004. What was the date and the time?

[Kody Bobe]

March 23. It was 5:30pm See, he knows it.

[Joni Lamb]

That's how you know God showed up. They remember the exact time.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, well, you have like little pockets of time in the military of like, freedom. And it was just enough time for me to get to my room with three other roommates and they weren't there. So I knew I could have that time. And then I had to get back down to my athletic training for Naval Aircrew Candidate School. But, you know, it was after partying in Panama City and we were. We did just about every high you could do.

[Joni Lamb]

So you've been there like for several days?

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, for four days. We were there for four days. So we just took naps incrementally because we wanted to party and we wanted to experience that.

[Joni Lamb]

So you did everything you were big enough to do in Panama City and more.

[Kody Bobe]

And thank God for the grace of the military, but. And God's grace at that time in my life to protect me. But it was really. I hit rock bottom to say, like, oh, okay, so sex can't satiate my soul. Partying can't satiate my soul. I've tried just about everything that I know, and I don't know where anybody's at watching this. I've tried so many different things, and I lived that life. I took a Bible I didn't know the author of. I didn't know how many books were in this Bible. I didn't know it had two parts. I just knew I was looking for something. I opened it up. I had no idea what page it was on. And I got on my knees and I said, God, if you're real, I'm in.

[Joni Lamb]

I love those prayers, by the way. Can I just say that if you're watching right now, that's really all you have to say. It doesn't matter what you've done or where you've been, but if you're ready for a real change in your life, that kind of prayer of desperation from a heart that's open to really understand there is a God that loves you. He'll meet you right where you are. And that's what happened with you.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. And so much so, I didn't know any biblical language or, like, Christianese. Right. So I was just like. I walked over to my Connected by youy bathroom. They call him your head mate. In the military, the bathroom's called the head. And I was like, hey, man, I just met God. And he's. Literally. His reaction to me was, you're probably still drunk from this week. Like, that was a genuine.

[Joni Lamb]

But what happened when you prayed that prayer? Like, something supernatural did happen.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah.

[Kody Bobe]

So it was like the greatest high in every fiber of my being. And so I tell people all the time, sometimes you, physiologically, maybe you're watching a horror movie and you feel fear when you're worshiping God. At times, you'll feel his presence physically. And that's what I felt. Where do you have goosebumps over your whole body?

[Joni Lamb]

Well, you know, I've interviewed thousands of people over 40 years, and one of the things that so many testimonies like yours have said to me is the way they would describe it is like they felt liquid love for the first time.

[Kody Bobe]

That's so cool.

[Joni Lamb]

Like, liquid love pouring over them in a way that they've never experienced. But it was an experience that so changed you as Far as, wow, this is more euphoria than I've ever felt from anything else that I've ever done.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. And, you know, at that point, I chased so many highs, so to be able to experience that moment, I knew God was real and the God of that Bible, the one I just prayed to, was real.

[Joni Lamb]

What were some of the things that God delivered you from immediately?

[Kody Bobe]

Oh, unforgiveness, anger. I mean, I had such a bad temper, like, short temper.

[Joni Lamb]

What about drugs, alcohol? You know, is that a process? Because it was. Yeah, sometimes there's a process. You have to understand sometimes. I mean, I've seen people miraculously delivered, you know, at the moment they pray and. But others I've seen, like, the saved sanctification. That's the sanctification process where the Holy Spirit teaches you and takes you through a process. It's a little harder.

[Kody Bobe]

Oh, it's discipline.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

How did you even.

[Cody Bobe]

How did you get discipled after that point, like, in the military?

[Joni Lamb]

Thanks.

[Kody Bobe]

Great question. I literally had a sport bike, so I was at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, where they. And I did aircrew, but that's where the blue angel pilots train. And of course, I'm a Top Gun fan. So I was racing, you know, the planes when they take off and out the back of Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida is a church. So I get saved. And I'm like, I want to go learn about God. I didn't know there was denominations. I knew nothing. I just knew that was a church with a cross. And I went there that same day.

[Joni Lamb]

And what happened when you went?

[Kody Bobe]

It was amazing. I'm still friends with that pastor and his son. It was so powerful. And they actually described what baptism is.

[April Osteen Simons]

Yeah.

[Kody Bobe]

So I walked to the back and, like, I was a bold partier for Christ, so I just. Am just a bold person. So I walked to the back and signed up, and I invited everybody that partied with me to come out.

[Joni Lamb]

And so you got baptized?

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Wait, what did they say? Were they like, what's going on?

[Joni Lamb]

Yeah, they had to see a change in you, though.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, they were so curious. So we had like, 35, 40 guys show up with me to church, and I think eight of them got saved at my baptism, which was super cool.

[Cody Bobe]

Did you feel different after you got baptized?

[Kody Bobe]

No, I didn't. No, it was really. I was really stoked because I just. The pastor described what it was when I got baptized, and I'm like, cool. Yeah. I want to publicly profess my faith in front of this church and all my friends. So they came out, Some of them get saved.

[Joni Lamb]

It's kind of like releasing the old and becoming a new creature in Christ as you come up out of the water.

[Kody Bobe]

Yes.

[Joni Lamb]

It's symbolic of that.

[Kody Bobe]

It was symbolic. Yeah. I didn't feel like God's presence in that moment. I just.

[Joni Lamb]

Not like the first time.

[Kody Bobe]

But this is what's really cool. I want to share this with you. So my number and my lucky number was four all the way. Growing up, I don't share this a ton. A month later, I get a thing called a baptism certificate, and I actually have it. And I never forget what happened when I saw it because I sat back and I knew how much God loved me to say that whole time. And I got baptized on 4404 and I had no idea the date, but I said, like, I love the Lord with my whole heart and I am ingrained, like alpha male.

[Joni Lamb]

And I just started crying those little God wings. But one of the.

[Cody Bobe]

I didn't feel like he cared.

[Kody Bobe]

He cared, like before the beginning of time, you knew that that day, in front of my friends, my public profession of faith would be on 4000, 404. And I was like, what is the probability that that would happen? So it was really cool of like, hey, you can be going through all of those things, like me and deliberately against God and he's still radically in love with you. And that love I have in my baptism certificate to see, like, oh, even in the depth of my filth, you knew this day was coming.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

What did your dad and your brother think when you got baptized?

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, it was a journey. It was a journey for sure. My brother still thinks I'm a little crazy.

[Joni Lamb]

We're still praying for him.

[April Osteen Simons]

Yeah.

[Kody Bobe]

Yes. And my dad was, you know, it was really cool because, like, talk about redemption and God's detailed love. It was on my dad's birthday. I gave my life to Christ. March 23rd is his birthday. And I didn't know that at the time. And it was really cool. When I analyzed all the information data wise, I was like, oh, man.

[Joni Lamb]

Well, it's important that when you pray that prayer and you invite Jesus in to forgive you of your sins. Because the Bible says, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I ask people all the time, if you were to die right now, would you go to heaven or hell? Some people say, well, heaven, because I'm a good person. Wrong answer. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I think sometimes it's harder for people who have tried to live a good life, maybe not done anything to understand their need for a savior. But if you're watching today and you haven't prayed that prayer, how important is that, Cody? And would you lead someone right now that's watching? We can repeat after you. Why is it important to pray that prayer?

[Kody Bobe]

Well, it will change your entire life and it changes your destiny. Like, for me, my favorite thing about following Jesus, and I want everybody to know this is it changes your here and now. Jesus said that the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, which I experienced in John chapter 10. Jesus says, But I came to give you life and life more abundantly. And that life changed everything. I have the ability to be the person I've always felt like I was called to be. And that prayer, and I want to lead you guys in it because it's really simple. It's a heartfelt prayer where your mouth speaks the words and your entire life changes in one moment. So I'd love to lead. Just pray after me. God, I come before you.

[Joni Lamb]

God, I come before you.

[Kody Bobe]

And I confess that I need a savior.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And I confess that I need a savior.

[Kody Bobe]

I ask that you save me right where I am.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I ask that you save me right where I am.

[Kody Bobe]

And give me the life that Jesus died to give me.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Give me the life that Jesus died to give me.

[Kody Bobe]

I confess Jesus as Lord.

[Joni Lamb]

I confess Jesus as Lord.

[Kody Bobe]

And I thank you for new life.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And I thank you for new life.

[Kody Bobe]

In Jesus name, amen.

[Cody Bobe]

Jesus name, amen.

[Kody Bobe]

So that prayer changes everything, but part of my discipleship journey, it doesn't. And it'd be a lot easier to evangelize the gospel of Jesus today if I could tell you it gave you a new brain, a new heart, and a muscular skeletal system. Like, it'd be great, like, hey, ladies, if you're struggling with your health, come to Jesus and I'm gonna give you a perfect 25 year old body with no weight problems.

[April Osteen Simons]

Right?

[Joni Lamb]

Well, what it does for your spirit is it guarantees eternal life. But we're here on this earth. And so to be able to fulfill God's plan for our life, after we've invited Jesus into our heart, then we also understand that there's a body that we need to take care of. And you really, really talk about that with men and women and with everyone. And of course, you wrote the book Soul con challenge. Put down your fork, pick up your cross. I love that. Yeah, but talk a little bit about that because. And also talk about how God set you free from pornography. And sexual addiction and all those things. Drugs, alcohol. How did that happen?

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, it was what we just talked about. I get saved and I realize I have the same brain and that.

[Joni Lamb]

And it's wired kind of.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. And it'd be so great to be able to say, like, come to Christ and you can get a new whatever you're looking for, get a new brain, get a new joints, get, you know, whatever. But it doesn't work that way. He gives you the power to do good inside of you. He set me free from a lot of my addictions, like to alcohol, my lusts that were out of control. But thank God he didn't take it away, because I get to enjoy that in the campfire of my home, of my marriage.

[J.R. Martinez]

Right.

[Kody Bobe]

I just realized that I had to rewire my brain to God's word.

[J.R. Martinez]

So.

[Kody Bobe]

So what Paul said. And I just took the Bible. I read it in four months, cover to cover. I had so many questions. And now I've read the Bible through a lot more times. I think it's like 18 or 19. I still have a lot of questions. Not saying I figured it all out, but I have so many questions still. But I learned that the discipleship, the sanctification part is my responsibility and my responsibility to connect with other men about.

[Joni Lamb]

Right. And that's one thing you talk to men about. I mean, to create men, make men. And you know what I say for women? You can. My husband talks about, you can date a boy, or you can date a man, or you can date a godly man. There's three categories there. And so you're really trying to see men grow up and reach their destiny in what God has called them to do.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's super important because you have to make that decision every single day. And that's. Jesus says, if you want to be my follower, you have to pick up your cross and daily. Like, you have to deny your selfish ways. Pick up your cross daily and follow me. If I was Judas at the time, right. Like, trying to Judas Iscariot, I'd be really angry with that message. Like, they didn't know what the empty cross meant. The picture of victory. Judas was thinking about money. I'm sure the whole time of, like, man, this is really gonna kill our offerings. Jesus, if you keep preaching like this, but if you wanna be like Christ, it's denying your sinful ways, your selfish ways, picking up your cross daily and following him.

[Joni Lamb]

But there was also an accountability factor.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah.

[Joni Lamb]

For you, like with pornography, right?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah.

[Joni Lamb]

You had to shine the light on that and tell someone to get free.

[Kody Bobe]

Well, I didn't know that like there was a culture of hiding sin. Like I just blurted it out. Like I'd meet with guys and be like, cool, I'm going to show up to this men's Bible study. Hey, I'm dealing with some rated X issues in my life. And they'd be like, oh man. And I didn't know what I grew up in. There wasn't that culture.

[Jared Isaacman]

Yeah.

[Kody Bobe]

And they're like cultural. I'm like, oh, you're uncomfortable right now. And I just kind of analyzed it.

[Joni Lamb]

No, no, because some of you sitting here are doing it and it's hidden and all of a sudden you've hit a nerve. Right?

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. And when you realize that in the old, like read the Old Testament, God deals with X rated things. He deals with R rated things. Sometimes he uses X rated illustrations to make a point about sin. And I just realized that the culture of men at the time didn't have the, A lot of them in the church didn't have the bandwidth to deal with X rated conversations. Pointed to a savior that could solve those problems. And that's where the Lord propelled me on my journey to what I call the gray area of discipleship. To sit with guys. Cause we have this.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

So that's like the starting point of wanting to. Okay, cool.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, so that was the starting point of like in the military they teach a problem solution mentality. And I saw a problem that I couldn't find a solution for. And I was devouring books because in the military like you just have like go to work. And I didn't have a wife or kids, so I literally had nothing else to do. So I just read and I would read these books to say, okay, here's some principles and like tactics to accomplish this. But I just saw like it was, it was.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

What did you feel shame whenever you recognized and other Christians that it was uncomfortable or what did you do with that?

[Kody Bobe]

Thank God I didn't feel so.

[Joni Lamb]

I don't think so. I just think he is one of those guys like we'll just lay on the ground.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

I feel like that would be the normal reaction.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, I think it would.

[Joni Lamb]

If I knew if you came from

[Kody Bobe]

that background, like if I knew any concept of it.

[Joni Lamb]

But then you finally found men that would be honest with you and you've been able to help so many. I want to talk about that when we come back. But I also want to hear about the woman that came into his life. Yes, she did as You've heard today key part of masculinity is leadership. Being an effective leader takes strong communication. And we will tell you about the life languages because they can help you sharpen that skill. We'll be right back after this.

[Life Languages Announcer]

Take a moment. Find yourself deeper. Connection starts with understanding every language helps you discover the art of relating to others. Your strengths, your weaknesses in detailed summary to bring you closer to those around you. Everyone wants to be understood. Find the connection that you've been missing. Get your [e-mail] all right, we're back

[Joni Lamb]

with Kody Bobe, and we have to find out because here you are. God has done this amazing work in your life, but you're not able to really walk in a marriage yet. And so tell me about meeting this woman that came into your life.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, so I just took God at his word and I read his word and I saw a whole bunch of people had opinions about God. But I'm just so. I'm stupid enough to realize everything I don't know. So I just was like, okay, God's his word, so that's an extension of him, and I want to be like him and I want to obey him. So I made a list. And this Psychology Today. A delayed reward will give you a greater high than most things on this planet. So thinking about that reward, and I just used it in a godly way to where we know right now we can think of a lemon and we'll have a physiological response in our mouth. I just started to think about the reality of God's promise and what that wife would look like. A wife that would be faithful and I'd be faithful with. And I never could comprehend that in my life. Like, being faithful to one woman, having sex with one woman the rest of my life, and that being good, I had to trust God's word with. And I just wrote it out and

[Joni Lamb]

I kept it because he created sex.

[Kody Bobe]

He created sex. So I'm like, I want to experience that sex. I've experienced high sex. I've experienced this. But I want that. Like, I want everything that you have. And I want to tell everyone from the, like, rooftops that sex is worth every ounce of struggle. You'll get fighting for it.

[Joni Lamb]

Okay, we want to hear about the woman.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, really?

[Kody Bobe]

It's amazing. So I actually, the Lord gave me the strength, and I became, like, free from the addiction of pornography and walked in purity. And I was like, lord, please, please, fast, fast. Can you bring an amazing wife? And I did meet an amazing person the next Girl that I dated was

[Joni Lamb]

actually my wife and she was in the military also.

[Kody Bobe]

She wasn't. She was at Oklahoma City University. For there we met at a church in Oklahoma. I was stationed. I flew in the Navy. But where plane was too big. I was at Tinker Air Force Base.

[Joni Lamb]

Okay.

[Kody Bobe]

So we were serving in the youth group. I was serving as a security guard and she was there serving the youth. We met and we like, we courted. I didn't know what that was. I read a book on it and

[Karen Kilgariff]

so I courted her.

[Kody Bobe]

And I'll never forget.

[Joni Lamb]

No sex. You just courted?

[Kody Bobe]

No sex, nothing. Until we got married. Like we kissed, but I was like, oh, this is really scary. But until our wedding night. And it was incredible. So 19 almost and a half years and sex with one woman.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

What did she think about your story?

[Kody Bobe]

It was great. So she was a virgin when we got married and you know, so having somebody like me that came from that background. But thankfully God gave her just like crazy amounts of grace and love for me and never. She like never uses it against me, but she was able to see me as that.

[Joni Lamb]

And what her name is?

[Kody Bobe]

Haley.

[Joni Lamb]

Haley.

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah. She's incredible.

[April Osteen Simons]

So.

[Joni Lamb]

Okay, quickly, your book, we don't have a lot of time. Soul Con Challenge. Who needs to read it and why?

[Kody Bobe]

I would say almost every man out there because it's going to remind men of the spiritual war that we're in. I tell guys all the time, if you have a struggle with an addiction, it's a spiritual battle. It's not a neurological addiction. And we have to understand as Christians, we have an enemy. His name is Satan and he has demons. And if you're a Christian listening and you're struggling with an addiction, if you're not a Christian, that core of the addiction is a spiritual war from angels and demons. And the only way to win is Christ, who already won that war for us.

[Joni Lamb]

And also you talk about taking care of your physical body.

[Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kody Bobe]

There's. I mean there's a hell weekend there. It's really fun. Guys have experienced it all over the world, whether from like elite special forces to 400 pounds overweight. But it just induces a little bit of suffering. There's a diet. You fast for a full day together and then it builds camaraderie.

[Joni Lamb]

How many push ups a day you just get challenged.

[Kody Bobe]

You're challenged to do 40 push ups before you leave the house every morning.

[Joni Lamb]

Okay.

[Cody Bobe]

What would your encouragement to be men to men who are watching right now?

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah, yeah. There's always hope. In Jesus, I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart, he can take any situation and turn it around. And hope isn't just an idea, an esoteric concept. He has a name, and it's Jesus. And he will meet you right where you are and change everything in your life.

[Joni Lamb]

That's so good. Well, we're out of time. But before we close, I want you to remember this. God has more for your homes, more for your communities, and more for your nations. He is calling men to rise up. Ephesians 2 reminds us we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. So I'll leave you with one question. Will you accept the challenge? If you're watching today and you prayed that prayer with Cody, I want you to go to the phone right now and call. We would love to pray with you. Or if you're someone who just needs prayer, that prayer line number's on the screen. We have amazing prayer partners. They're always ready to stand by and pray with you. If you did pray that prayer, I want to send you the Gospel of John. It's a free book. It's a great place to start in the Bible. Cody talked about how he took the Bible and read it all the way through 66 books to read. But the Gospel of John is a great place to start as a new believer, and that's just our gift to you. And it's absolutely free. Well, I do want to thank Cody for joining us today. Be sure you pick up a copy of his book Soul Con Challenge. Put down your fort, pick up your cross. It's available now and for more, you can visit him online at soulcon. As always, make sure to follow us on all social media. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for full episodes, exclusive content, and let us know how Table Talk is touching your life. We love hearing from you. Of course, you can also listen to the Joni Table Talk podcast, available now on all major platforms. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you, Kody. Thank you, ladies. Well, we love masculine men, don't we are really excited about this book and what Cody's doing. So thanks for being here today.

[Kody Bobe]

Thank you.

[Joni Lamb]

All right, we'll see you next time. Bye bye for today.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants. Switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail]

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to DOL dollars per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] Thumbtack presents uncertainty Strikes I was surrounded.

[Georgia Hardstark]

The aisle and the options were closing in. There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes and natural bristles. There were too many choices. What if I never got my living room painted? What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use? What if I just used Thumbtack? I can hire a top rated pro that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices and read reviews. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today.

[Newt Gingrich]

This is Newt Ginglish, former Speaker of the House and a proud American citizen. I'm celebrating America's 250th birthday on my podcast Newt's World with 15 special episodes and I've got some great guests. Walter Isaacson, Jonathan Turley, Brett Baer.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I will be working because it's a big, big day. I'll be in Washington and have all kinds of coverage through The Day of

[Newt Gingrich]

America250 Rachel Campos Duffy there's nothing like American music.

[Karen Kilgariff]

We're the home of rock and roll. We're the home of rap. We're the home of pop music.

[Newt Gingrich]

Eric Metaxas Jared Isaacman I plan to

[Jared Isaacman]

be flying an F5 fighter jet painted in Freedom 250 colors along with four other fighter jets flying over the nation's

[Newt Gingrich]

capital, the story of the national anthem and the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Join me and let's celebrate America's 250. Listen to Newts World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

[Jack Armstrong]

Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand? We're not boring. Lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy

[Karen Kilgariff]

modern world about something about a comedic tone.

[Jack Armstrong]

We have a winner.

[Jared Isaacman]

Yes.

[Jack Armstrong]

Listen to Armstrong and Yeti on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[J.R. Martinez]

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of America. The soul of this country is found in the stories of those who defended it it. I'm J.R. martinez, a U.S. army veteran. I know that true valor isn't just a word. It's a choice made in a split second. That's why I'm honored to bring you a brand new season of Medal of Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. You'll fly into the heart of a rescue mission with Air Force pilot James Fleming in Vietnam.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I'm gonna put you out in the middle of hell. If you have to come home, I'll bring you home. That's my duty. It's my honor.

[J.R. Martinez]

We'll also travel back to 1926 to witness Richard Byrd's historic flight over the North Pole. These are more than just stories of combat. They are testaments to leadership, community, and the human spirit. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Could your mind be pointing to truths that science can't explain about life, purpose, and even eternity? Today's guest is here to reveal discoveries that could change the way you see life and what comes after from his book, the Immortal Mind. Welcome to Joni Table Talk. Friends from the table, I'm your host, Rachel Lamb Brown, and I'm here with my co host, April Osteen Simons. We have a lot of names, don't we?

[April Osteen Simons]

We do have a lot of names. It's gonna be a great show.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

I'm excited. And of course, we have our special guest. We're very excited to welcome Dr. Michael Egnor with us today. Welcome to the show.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Than Pleasure to be here.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

We're excited to have you. You're a neurosurgeon, done over 7,000 brain surgeries and you're here to talk about your new book, the Immortal Mind, which I'm excited to get into that. But first, take us back to the beginning. What was life like growing up?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Growing up, I was raised in a secular environment. My family didn't go to church at all. And God wasn't really a part of our lives when I was growing up.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Did they believe in God?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I think so. My mother would occasionally take me to church on, like Christmas? My father, I think, believed in God, but there was no prayer. I wasn't baptized or anything.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Did you ever have conversations with your parents about what they believed or what you should believe, like those natural curiosity as a kid?

[Karen Kilgariff]

No, no, no. We were kind of a poor family and there just wasn't the kind of conversations we had.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

And so you were interested in science you loved to learn.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I loved science. To me, the natural world was this magical place. And when I was a little kid, I used to have these fantasies of me in my laboratory trying to make discoveries and so on. Other kids were fantasizing.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

So you always knew you were gonna be doing something in the scientific world?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I think so, yeah.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Cause to me, science seemed to be. Was a way of finding out about mysteries but also being sure about them, that is, that you could prove it. You know, you could do experiments and prove things. And to me, that fascinated me. So I, in some ways, worshiped science in kind of an innocent way as a child. And so I went to college and majored in biochemistry, and I thought that was really fascinating. But there were things about biochemistry, about the way molecules worked inside the body, that even as an atheist, I didn't quite think made sense. That is, that this was an incredibly delicately regulated system. And I couldn't see how this could happen by chance. I couldn't even with natural selection, that didn't make any sense to me.

[April Osteen Simons]

You just kind of threw that in there that you were an atheist. So how did that transpire?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, yeah, right. Well, I was raised really, without God as a part of my life. And I thought that to be atheist was to be smart. That is, that, you know, I wasn't hostile to Christianity. I thought, first of all, the nicest people I knew were Christians. I thought they were all lovely people. I thought it was a beautiful story. I even read the New Testament some because I thought it was a beautiful story. I thought it was a myth. It was a fairy tale just like other fairy tales I read. And I was a scientist. I wasn't going to believe in fairy tales. And as time went on and I began to learn more about science, I realized that a lot of the atheist and materialist interpretations of science were the fairy tales and that the truth was not atheism.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Did you have this deep longing in your soul that you knew that there was something greater out there?

[Kody Bobe]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

I would have these episodes that I called hauntings, in which I would be going about my everyday life as a doctor, as a husband, as a parent. And then all of a sudden, I start to think, how did I get here? Like, why am I here? Where am I going? What's my purpose? It's such a strange thing to find yourself in the midst of this life. And the analogy I would use is it was like I was suddenly, one morning, I woke up in a mansion, but I didn't know how I got in the mansion. Like, all of a sudden, I'm in this beautiful place. Like, who put me here? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do here? And then you go about your life living in the mansion, like you'd be a fool not to ask, how did I get here?

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Yeah. Like, the most important things are the reasons why you existed were missing.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yes. So I thought about it, but then, of course, you know, my pager would go off, or I'd have to take the kids to a baseball game or something. And that. You kind of lose that.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Yeah. The demands of life keep you going, keep you busy.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Yeah. Yeah. And life serves as kind of an intoxicant of sorts. You kind of, like, you get all caught up in things, and you get your gratification from just your everyday life without asking the fundamental, really important questions.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

I mean, on the outside, you had a great life, very successful. You had achieved, you know, your dream that you had as a child, and, you know, very successful neurosurgeon. Great family, wife, children.

[April Osteen Simons]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But then again, how. How can a person be successful if you don't even know why you're here?

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Right.

[Karen Kilgariff]

So there was always that hollowness that. Yeah, successful in one respect, but I didn't know why I was in the mansion. I didn't know what I was supposed to do.

[April Osteen Simons]

Tell us about that encounter that changed everything for you.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, I was having these hauntings and thinking about there must be something deeper. And my youngest son was born, and he. When he was a couple months old, we noticed that he wasn't making eye contact or smiling with us, as babies usually do at that age. So I became concerned that he might be autistic. And my wife had the same fear. And I know that many people who are on the autism spectrum are very highly functioning people and who have good relationships, but there are people with autism who are very severely impaired. And I was afraid that might be him and that he wouldn't know me or he wouldn't love me. And that terrified me, the idea to have a child who I loved, who didn't love me back. So I, one night was going out to see a patient in consultation at an outside hospital. It was a Catholic hospital. And after I saw the patient, I stopped by the chapel in the hospital, and I decided, all right, I'm going to pray about this, because I don't know if God exists. He probably doesn't exist. But I got nothing else. So I went into the chapel. I sat down. Not sat down. I kneeled. I knelt in front of the altar and I said, God, I don't know if you exist. I have my doubts, but I can't take this. I can't have my son, who I love, not know me, be disconnected from me. So I heard a voice. Only time in my life I've ever heard a voice. And the voice said, but that's what you're doing to me. And so I kind of collapsed in front of the altar. And the next day I called up the church, I said, I need to get baptized.

[Life Languages Announcer]

Like now.

[Joni Lamb]

What?

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Like, take us back to that moment. Like, what were you thinking and feeling? Because for someone who hadn't really encountered God in that way before, I mean, that had to be just all consuming.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It was definitely all consuming. And it's really directed my life since then. But. And I thought a lot about that. The voice wasn't a stranger. It's like it, it was, it was not a voice out of the blue. It was a voice that I, that I knew, but that I hadn't ever paid any attention to.

[Newt Gingrich]

Wow.

[Karen Kilgariff]

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's like it was, it was like an old friend kind of reminding me that, you know,

[April Osteen Simons]

how did your scientific mind explain that?

[Karen Kilgariff]

My scientific mind said that I need to start understanding science in a different way. That science is generally done from a materialist predicate. You think of things in terms of atoms bouncing around and stuff like that. But there is a deeper reality that transcends that and that I realized I had to get up to speed.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

So you go, you call the church, you get baptized. How does your life change after that encounter?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, first thing I should say is a couple days later was my six month old's six month birthday. And at his birthday party, he was perfectly normal, smiling, everything. And he was a perfectly normal young man. So God heard your prayer? Yes, yes. And I realized from reading the Gospels that Jesus teaches in parables. And there's a. I mean, he certainly gives instruction in the Gospels, but a lot of his instruction is in stories. And sometimes the parables are enacted, sometimes the parables are acted out in our lives. And if you realize that what's happening to you is part of a parable and he's trying to tell you something.

[April Osteen Simons]

I think it's so interesting because you saw a miracle. I mean, what did that do to you? Did that change everything from then on?

[Karen Kilgariff]

It did in a sense that I kind of went on a mission. My mission was that for all of my life up until that point, I had been blind to God and ignorant of God and hurting God in a sense, that he wanted me to know how he felt having a son who didn't love him. And I kind of felt that I had to do some payback, like make

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

up for lost time.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Not only make up for lost time, but there is a lot of atheist and materialist influence in our culture that is really keeping people from God. And that ugly spirit had control of me for a while, meaning it was keeping me from God. So I kind of want to help people see that reason and science and truth is on Christians is on the Christian side.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

They're actually not pointing opposite directions, but they're actually. Science proves an existence of a creator.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Precisely. If people who claim that science points away from a creator are not telling the truth about the science, the science overwhelmingly confirms God's existence. There are some things about God that we can't know through science. You know, reason only gets us so far. But God's existence can most surely be shown by science. And many of the attributes of God can be shown also. Thomas Aquinas wrote about that a lot.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

What are some of the biggest things that you've seen in science that have pointed to the existence of a creator?

[Karen Kilgariff]

The three that are the most obvious. There are different ways to look at this. One is from the scientific standpoint, There are three major things in science that point to God. There are also a number of different proofs of God's existence that are more philosophical, that are also very powerful, but they're kind of kind of esoteric. The three big scientific proofs are, number one, the Big Bang. Scientists before the Big Bang was discovered believed that the universe was eternal in the past, that there wasn't a beginning. It's just always been here.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Right?

[Karen Kilgariff]

And there have been debates about that before this. But the Big Bang showed that really the universe did begin and time began and matter began at a distinct moment, I guess maybe 16 billion years ago. And we've learned a great deal about that moment since then. And you got to explain where that came from, because before the Big Bang, there was no before, there was no time, There was no matter. So how did it happen? And as some scientists have said, who become religious people, if you want to know where the universe came from, read Genesis.

[April Osteen Simons]

Wow.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That's closer to science than all these scientific theories about a steady state eternal universe. So the Big Bang confirms Genesis in a powerful way. Let there be light was an explosion of energy. The second evidence from science for God's existence, which is very powerful, is called the anthropic principle. And it's the idea that the universe is fine tuned for our existence. There are over 100 different constants in physics, like the force of gravity, the strong nuclear force, electromagnetic forces, all kinds of numerical values that have to be precisely what they are. If they were slightly different, we would never have come here. Life wouldn't be possible. And as one scientist said, it's like somebody was setting things up for us. Like the whole universe was orchestrated so humanity would evolve and would evolve in a theistic way, not a Darwinian, because we didn't evolve dominion. So the fine tuning is very powerful evidence. As I said, somebody was expecting us. And the third thing is the genetic code, that there's a movie called Contact from a book written by Carl Sagan, who was a famous atheist scientist, where a code was received from outer space. And people discovered the existence of aliens because they decode what the aliens sent them. And my reply to that is, we found the code. There's a code in our DNA. DNA is a more sophisticated computer code than anything that's ever been made by man. There are strands of DNA where it codes for proteins in one direction and codes for other proteins in the other direction. It's like they're superimposed. It's brilliant. Bill Gates actually mentioned it's like a computer code, except it's better than any computer code. Who wrote the code.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Deep intricacies, complexities. Code doesn't come would infer or suggest that there was a designer, a creator.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The only way one could look at the big bang, at the fine tuning of the universe, at the genetic code of all this miraculous, beautiful stuff we have around us and say there's no God, is if you're trying really, really hard to deny God's existence, any rational person looking at that would say, okay, all right, God exists.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

God exists. Well, you guys are going to want to stay tuned. We'll be right back right after this break.

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[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Friends from the Table. We're here with Dr. Michael Egnor discussing his book the Immortal Mind. I'm super excited about this. Tell us, what was the inspiration behind writing this book?

[Karen Kilgariff]

I had once I became a practicing neurosurgeon, I began operating and I started to see things with the Brain surgery and with my patients that weren't in any of my textbooks in medical school, the textbooks all looked at the brain as like a computer. And I found again and again that there were things about the brain that didn't work like a computer worked. For example, you could take out parts of the brain that were, like, affected by tumors, rather large parts, and people would be fine. You had to know which parts.

[April Osteen Simons]

You had to be careful. That's fascinating, man.

[Karen Kilgariff]

But major parts of the brain can be removed, and people can be completely normal. This wasn't in any textbook.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

What would they say in your textbooks that you survive without certain parts of your brain?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, first of all, they never asked the question, meaning this was never. The people who wrote the textbooks, almost without exception, were not clinical neurosurgeons. They weren't people who actually dealt with patients. They were scientists in a laboratory studying anatomical specimens and so on. So they didn't even honestly understand the question. The textbooks would describe the brain as this massively complex computer. And there are aspects of the brain that resemble computers in some ways, but not all parts of the brain are like that. And. And I've never had a good explanation from neuroscientists as to why it is that certain parts of the brain are quite expendable. They generally will say, well, other parts take over.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Yeah, talk about, in your clinical experience of doing over 7,000 surgeries, what you discovered about the difference between the brain and the mind.

[Karen Kilgariff]

And that's a very important question. It's an excellent question. And the question can be phrased like this. It was phrased like this back about 100 years ago by a neuroscientist and neurosurgeon named Wilder Penfield. Does the brain explain the mind completely? That is, that if you want to know everything there is to know about the mind, can you get it out of just knowing about the brain? And Penfield thought. And I thought when I began my career that, yeah, yeah, the brain explains the mind completely. At the end of his career and the end of my career, I say, no way. There are parts of the mind that are not from the brain.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Okay, talk about the specific clinical experiences

[Karen Kilgariff]

that make you believe that the clinical experiences are based on, number one, you can take out major parts of the brain. Even doing awake brain surgery, where the patient is awake while you're operating, which is one particular kind of operation. There's no pain. So it's not. It sounds terrible, but it's not. And you can take out parts of the brain while you're Conversing with someone and it doesn't change them at all. They're perfectly fine. There's been a lot of research done on what you can stimulate the brain to make it do. And literally hundreds of thousands of stimulations in people's brains over the past century. And the brain can be stimulated to do four things. Basically, it can make you move. You stimulate the right part, you move. It can make you have a perception, like feel a tingling or receive light. It can make you have emotions where you feel powerful emotions. And it can make you have memories. You can have memories, but you can never create reason or free will by stimulating the brain.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Have I tried?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, yes, yes. I mean, me personally, I don't do that kind of surgery that much Wilder Penfield did, and it's been tried many, many times. And what he would do is he would map the brain. And other surgeons, brain mapping isn't my end of brain surgery as much as other things, but people who map the brain will map it looking for any response. And the responses they get are always these four. There's never been a case in recorded medical history of stimulating the brain and getting someone to use reason or to use free will. If you think about it, if we did have that, you could do better at math by getting a brain implant, or you could become a better person by having an implant that would make you choose moral things more. But that never happens, and there's no evidence that it can happen. And then it leads you to the conclusion that reason and free will don't come from the brain, but they're spiritual powers. Our mind really is various activities of our spirit, and some of our spirit makes us move and feel and things like that. But there are abilities that we have that are spiritual abilities that are very real that we're using right now as we talk, that aren't from our brain. And that's reason and free will.

[April Osteen Simons]

You did a study on the patterns of near death experiences. Tell us what you saw on that. That's so interesting.

[Jared Isaacman]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

People, about 20 million Americans living today either have had a near death experience or will have one during their lifetime. So they're fairly common, actually. And there are four characteristics of near death experiences that any effort to explain them has to account for. The first characteristic is that what people experience at the moment of death is an enormous clarification of their abilities, of their ability to think, to see. It's almost like your brain actually shrinks your mind, and your mind becomes bigger when you're no longer sort of trapped in your Brain.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Yeah.

[Karen Kilgariff]

In your head, people describe beautiful colors, describe deep, deep insights. The second thing that has to be explained is that people can have out of body experiences where they see things and know things they could not have known otherwise, they couldn't have known in their body. They'll see things from a perspective that they didn't have when they were just laying there and doctors were working on them. The third characteristic, which is not often mentioned, but it's actually fascinating, is that there are thousands of reports of near death experiences in the medical literature. There's not a single one that I'm aware of where you go down the tunnel and you meet a living person at the other end of the tunnel. Everybody you see on the other side is dead. Even if you didn't know they were dead. If near death experiences were just wishful thinking, like, oh, I need my mother kind of thing, if your mom was still alive, you won't see her only if she's dead. And the fourth characteristic, which I think is very powerful, is that near death experiences are transformative. People are different after these. Almost everybody loses their fear of death. People say, I'm not afraid of death anymore.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Tell us some of the real near death experiences that you've kind of gleaned from.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Sure. Well, the probably most famous one was a near death experience of a woman named Pam Reynolds. She was a woman in her mid-30s back in 1991 who had an aneurysm, which is a ballooning of a blood vessel at the base of her brain that was going to explode and kill her. And it was inoperable back then. Nowadays it'd be easily operable, but back then, we didn't have the technology to do it. There was only one kind of operation that could be tried. It was called a standstill procedure done by a surgeon named Dr. Robert Spetzler in Phoenix. And he was the world's expert at this. And he actually had to to kill her on the operating table, meaning stop her heartbeat, stop the blood flowing in her brain, drain the blood out of her brain. He cooled her body down to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, then opened the aneurysm and repaired it internally. And he had 30 minutes to do that before permanent brain damage occurred. So he did it. Operation went beautifully. And after the surgery, she told him that she watched the surgery, she saw the whole thing. And he said, come on, you're just hallucinating. And she said, oh, no, no, no. And then she repeated to him the conversations he had during the surgery when she was brain dead. She repeated to him what the other doctors were saying. She told him what his instruments looked like, all these details. And actually, she wrote a book. This was on television. They interviewed him about this. And he said she was right. I don't know how she knew, but she was right. She saw everything. So she said she went down a tunnel. She spoke with her grandmother at the other end of the tunnel who had passed away. And her grandmother said, well, it's beautiful here, but you have to go back. You got three kids, you got some work to do. So she went back the tunnel, she went back into her body. She said it was like diving into ice water because her body temperature was 60 degrees Fahrenheit. So there are a lot of fascinating near death experiences.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

And these near death experiences prove your point that the mind is separate from the brain.

[Karen Kilgariff]

That is, we have spiritual souls and our soul is our spirit, and our spirit can exist without our body. We are created to be embodied. So we will get resurrection bodies that won't have all the flaws that our bodies have now, but we have spiritual souls. And our spirit not only does not die, it can't die. It's not the kind of thing that can die. When you think about it, like what happens when we think of death. What does death mean? When I die, am I going to disappear? No. Every atom in my body will be somewhere. Every atom in our bodies go somewhere. It doesn't just vanish. What happens is that we disintegrate. That is, everything comes apart. But our souls, our spirits aren't integrated to begin with. They're not made of little particles. They're what's called metaphysically simple, so they can't disintegrate. So we are naturally immortal. It's not like we have to try. Our spirit cannot die unless God chose to just take us out of existence. But he wouldn't do that. So we're naturally immortal. And near death experiences just confirm that. And our Christian faith affirms that.

[April Osteen Simons]

You know, I think about Rachel, the greatest decision you ever made and we ever made was making Jesus the Lord of our life, to guarantee our eternal salvation and destiny with him. And. And, you know, you might be watching today and you're just thinking about who we're talking about, this God that we're talking about this great God that you know, that sent his only son to Jesus to give his life to die and be raised again so that we might have eternal life. And maybe you don't know him as your personal Lord and Savior. And today you'd like to do That I just want to lead you in a quick prayer. And, you know, it's a free gift. That's the great thing about God. It's a free gift. All you have to do is ask him into your heart. You can just pray. God, I confess my sins. I ask you to come into my heart. I believe you're my Lord and Savior. And today's the day I want to live for you for the rest of my life. And I want to make a difference for you on this earth. And if you prayed that prayer, man, you just made the best decision you could ever make. And, you know, if you want to tell somebody, you can call the number that you see on your screen and just say, hey, I gave my life to God today. And somebody on the other end will encourage you. You just made the best decision. Don't you agree, Rachel?

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Yeah, the best decision. Welcoming people into the body of Christ. And many of you are, you know, might find yourself, like Dr. Michael, wondering what the reason is for this life and the purpose that you have. And so we're so excited for all the people that are coming to discover that and find that. You know, the Bible talks about the daily renewing of our mind brings transformation. Do you think our mind can have power over our brain?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Oh, yes, yes. Very, very much so. It's very, very, very powerful. And of course, our brain has some power over us, as we know if we're tired or stressed or whatever, it can affect us. But our spirit has enormous power over our brain.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

What would you say to someone who's struggling in their thought life and they're just feeling like, maybe anxiety or depression, like they can't get off this loop? Well, stay doing great.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Well, a couple things. One is that welcome to the human condition. We all have it. We all have it. Nobody's immune from it. And that prayer is enormously effective. Enormously effective. It's better than any. Better than any pill that's coming from

[April Osteen Simons]

a neurosurgeon right there.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Absolutely. Absolutely. Prayer worked the way nothing else works. Prayers is very special.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

That's good. We're excited about the book, the Immortal Mind. Who needs to get it?

[Karen Kilgariff]

Who needs to get it? Everybody.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Everybody.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Because it really. We try to make the point that science and Christianity tell the same truth, that reality is not materialistic and it's not atheistic.

[Rachel Lamb Brown]

Well, that's so good, you guys. We barely scratched the surface, but we're out of time. And we want you guys to remember that your life is more than your physical body or your brain. You were fearfully and wonderfully made. This life is just a stepping stone to the life to come. So if you have questions or doubts today, we want you to encourage you to surrender those to God and He will direct your steps. And hey, if you need prayer today, please call the toll free number on your screen, 1-800-329-0029. Our wonderful prayer partners are standing by and ready to pray with you. As our free gift to you, we're gonna send you a copy of the Book of John to help you grow in your new journey of faith. For all of those people that prayed that prayer, we want to thank Dr. Michael for joining us. To get a copy of his book, Visit the Immortal mind.org Here it is. As always, make sure to follow us on all social media, subscribe to our YouTube channel and listen to the Joni Table Talk podcast available now on all major platforms. Thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, bye bye for today.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Newt Gingrich]

new troil podcast we're celebrating America's 250th birthday and I ask my guests how they're spending their fourth of July.

[Karen Kilgariff]

Brett Baer I will be working. I'll be in Washington because it's a big, big day.

[Jared Isaacman]

Jared Isaacman I plan to be flying in an F5 fighter jet painted in Freedom 250 colors along with four other fighter jets flying over the nation's capital.

[Newt Gingrich]

Listen to Newts world on the iHeartRadio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

[Jack Armstrong]

Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand? We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy modern world.

[Karen Kilgariff]

How about something about a comedic tone?

[Jack Armstrong]

We have a winner. Yes Listen to Armstrong. You get it on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[J.R. Martinez]

As America marks its 250th anniversary, we're looking back at two and a half centuries of rebellion and liberty through the eyes of the heroes who defended it.

[Karen Kilgariff]

The whole thing about this country is freedom. If we're not careful, we could lose that.

[J.R. Martinez]

On Medal of Stories of Courage, we bring you the defining moments of valor that went up above and beyond the call of duty. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.