Clergy vs. ICE & Thiel’s Antichrist Lectures (Religion News Roundup) (#357)

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Religion on the Mind

Host: Dan Koch

Episode: Clergy vs. ICE & Thiel’s Antichrist Lectures (Religion News Roundup) (#357)

Guest: Mason Meninga

Date: November 3, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode kicks off a new “Religion News Roundup” segment, where Dan Koch and guest, theologian and podcaster Mason Meninga, riff on recent stories at the intersection of psychology, religion, and spirituality. The conversation blends sharp insights, critique, personal anecdotes, and humor as they explore clergy activism against ICE, Gen Z’s changing religious landscape, and Peter Thiel’s “Antichrist” lectures, among other cultural stories.

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1. Dan & Mason’s Dynamic (01:08-11:35)

- Banter and Introduction

Dan describes Mason as "super lefty" while positioning himself as the archetypal centrist friend. They joke about their online personas, Twitter “shitposting,” and how their friendship has matured:

“Our friendship has aged like a fine balsamic vinegar. I’m ready to shout it from the rooftops, Mason...we’re friends and we can make podcasts together.” (03:56, Dan Koch)

A playful segment follows, with Dan pitching humorous introduction lines for Mason, reflecting his left-leaning, activist sensibilities. Notable quip:

“He would use CRISPR technology to splice the hashtag Free Palestine TikTok algorithm directly into his DNA.” (11:15, Dan Koch)

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2. Bible-Based Comedy: "The Promised Land" (12:25-17:24)

Discussion Topic: A new streaming show, The Promised Land: A Comedy of Biblical Proportions

• Dan plays the trailer—essentially, an Office/Parks and Rec-style mockumentary about Moses.
• Both discuss the show’s niche appeal: to enjoy its humor, viewers must know biblical stories and have a sense of irony or exvangelical detachment.

“You have to know your Bible well, especially that particular story, in order to get some of the humor...that’s a small Venn diagram.” (14:18, Mason Meninga)

They speculate the show may appeal most to ex-evangelicals, not fans of The Chosen.

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3. Is Gen Z Turning Toward Spirituality or Religion? (17:24-39:37)

Key Segment: Gen Z’s Religious and Spiritual leanings (19:15 Dan; 20:57 Mason)

• Gen Z are not flooding back to church, but are less likely to self-identify as atheists—more likely to be “spiritual” or “theist.”
• The predicted rise of atheism has plateaued, and young people’s attitudes are distinct from Gen X and millennials.
• Ryan Burge’s research underscores that the secularization curve is "flattening."

Psychological and Sociocultural Analysis

• Dan notes the rise in normalization of therapy, mindfulness, and therapeutic language, making spirituality more palatable for youth.
• Mason reflects on therapy and Christian overlaps:

“There have been so many moments in therapy where I’m like, this is just prayer with some electrostimulation going on. These are biblical concepts I learned from VeggieTales.” (26:41, Mason Meninga)

Community & Social Trends

Both discuss:

• How young adults’ delayed milestones (later drinking/sex) and increased online presence may ultimately draw some to community-rich places like church.
• The loss of “third spaces” in America makes church and similar communities especially significant.

Notable quote:

“There are very few spaces where you could be surrounded by people that don’t have any reason to care about you other than agreeing to participate in this community together.” (37:02, Mason)

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4. Clergy vs. ICE: Faith-Inspired Activism (39:37-58:01)

News Story: Chicago clergy nonviolently protesting at an ICE detention center; viral photo of Rev. David Black being pepper sprayed by officers.

• Mason sees this “compelling image” as the kind of Christianity that should be more visible—as counter-narrative to the dominant conservative religious story.

“It rewires one’s brain—oh, you can be religious and protest ICE. That renarrative is so important.” (41:00, Mason Meninga)

Faith vs. Politics: Deeper Analysis

Dan raises the common critique:

• Progressive Christianity may reduce faith to temporary politics, missing ‘universal’ Christ.
• Mason distinguishes: his own activism is rooted in faith first, with politics flowing from theology:

“There are deep theological beliefs that I have, and out of those I have my political stances...That’s the kind of Christianity I want to see in the world.” (44:29, Mason)

The Cruelty Factor

• Dan concedes that protesting ICE’s methods rather than its mere existence is more morally clear, especially amid the Trump administration’s “cruelty is the point” approach.
• Mason agrees that it’s the cruelty, more than mere deportation, that animates much of the protest.

“Cruelty is the point at this point. That seems to be different...the cruelty just seems out of line.” (57:08, Mason)

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5. Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Lectures: Power, Religion & Apocalypse (60:06-87:38)

News Story: Billionaire Peter Thiel delivered (closed-door) lectures on the Antichrist, sparking curiosity and protest.

• Dan recaps ‘antichrist’ theology, including its pop culture (Left Behind) roots and notes Thiel’s ambiguous blend of personal life (openly gay, describes himself as “orthodox Christian”) and religious-political signaling.

Cultural Context: The Power Elite Goes Christian?

• Mason notes a mini-trend: influential (mostly white, male) power brokers (Thiel, Richard Dawkins, Elon Musk, even Joe Rogan and Russell Brand) identifying as “culturally Christian”—often as a shorthand for conservative politics.

“A big reason they are now identifying as culturally Christian is because of the conservative politics...in America you probably should be a Christian if you want that worldview.” (64:44, Mason)

Hermeneutics (How The Bible is Read)

• Dan pokes fun at the selective use of end-times prophecy while ignoring Jesus’ emphasis on care for the marginalized:

“He’s talking about [the Antichrist] at the expense of anything Jesus seemed to be primarily committed to...”

• Both agree everyone “picks and chooses” scripture, but Thiel’s combo (apocalypticism + gay affirmation) is rare.

Satirical Protest

They read and laugh about the local Church of Satan’s costumed protest outside Thiel’s event, balancing humor with critique on the serious power dynamic at play.

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6. Climate Doomerism: Shifting Models & Political Anxiety (77:48-87:38)

Dan shares the encouraging news that climate models have been revised: the most catastrophic “doomer” scenarios are far less likely than believed a few years ago.

• Both note how fear and anxiety motivate both right and left.
• Mason is personally optimistic, resisting doomerism.

“Hell yeah, finally some fucking good news.” (82:46, Mason)

They reflect on how such “articles of faith” (e.g. climate doom, or the eventual triumph of the kingdom of God) structure progressive/liberal Christianity—and why Dan, unlike Mason, feels reduced confidence in utopian eschatology.

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7. Closing Reflection (87:38–End)

• Dan expresses appreciation for Mason’s faith-driven optimism (as opposed to pure ideological politics).
• The episode wraps with friendly ribbing about Mason’s name pronunciation and plans to collaborate again.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I had to do a full year of internal family systems before I could realize that there was a part of me that needed you.” (04:41, Dan)
• “There’s a part of left-wing morality police culture that lacks grace or forgiveness. Christianity offers a more stable way to know when you’ve arrived.” (abridged, 27:47)
• “You don’t get to just do...you don’t get to have this cultural influence in Christianity...You have to earn...until you have spent cumulative 100 hours worrying that you’re going to hell after masturbating, you do not get this label.” (67:00, Mason & Dan)
• “Who says Satanists don’t have a sense of humor?” (74:45, Dan, about the protest outside Thiel’s event)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:08 – Start of Religion News Roundup; Mason’s introduction and banter
• 12:25 – “The Promised Land” biblical comedy show critique
• 17:24 – Gen Z’s spirituality and data
• 26:03 – Therapy, spirituality, and cultural shifts in mental health
• 37:02 – Community in church and the decline of third spaces
• 39:48 – Clergy vs. ICE protest: viral photo and narrative
• 44:29 – Difference between faith-animated and politics-reduced Christianity
• 51:21 – The complexity and cruelty in contemporary immigration enforcement
• 60:06 – Peter Thiel’s Antichrist lectures: religion, power, & protest
• 64:44 – Power, cultural Christianity, and conservative politics
• 77:48 – Revised climate models: moving away from “doomerism”
• 87:38 – Closing reflections on faith, optimism, and future collaboration

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Tone/Speaker Style

The episode’s tone is candid, irreverent, intellectually rigorous, and frequently funny, with both participants comfortable cussing and trading jabs while staying focused on substantive, nuanced engagement with religious and psychological themes.

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For Listeners:

If you want a round-table look at religion and cultural change with humor, candor, and depth, this episode is a model—skipping the tribalism, keeping the faith (sometimes with difficulty), and refusing to give up on either hope or critique.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Graphs about Religion substack (Ryan Burge)
• The Nones (Book by R. Burge)
• Relevant Magazine, Guardian article on Thiel lectures
• “The Promised Land” series trailer
• Theology Beer Camp
• “Left Behind” novels
• The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells

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For questions, feedback, or to connect: [e-mail]

Transcript

[Mason Meninga]

Coca Cola for the big, for the small, the short and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love. For introverts and extroverts, the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you. This episode is brought to you by White Claw Surge. Nice choice hitting up this podcast. No surprises. You're all about diving into tastes everyone in the room can enjoy. Just like White Claw Surge. It's for celebrating those moments when connections have been made and the night's just begun. With bold flavors and 8% alcohol by volume.

[Dan Koch]

Unleash the night.

[Mason Meninga]

Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors, 8% alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer works Chicago, Illinois.

[Dan Koch]

Welcome back everybody to Religion on the Mind. The show focused on the overlap of psychology and religion and spirituality. And we're trying a new segment here today. We're calling it Religion News Roundup. And it's going to be a mix of serious and occasional more light hearted stories. And joining me for this journey, he's a podcaster, he's a YouTuber, he's got two master's degrees, an M. Div. And an MA in theology. Too bad you couldn't just put those together into one doctorate.

[Mason Meninga]

But my mom would, my mom makes that claim all the time that she, you know, she has two associates and she tells everyone she has a bachelor's.

[Dan Koch]

Okay, so I was gonna say this is who you are. And then lastly, he asks his baristas to add he him below his name on his to go coffees. It's Mason Meninga.

[Mason Meninga]

That's me. I am the he him guy. So I want to make sure that I'm like sort of the anti Charlie Kirk at Starbucks. So I forget what the conservatives were doing with his, you know, whatever name that they were putting on their Starbucks cups. But I, to sort of counteract that, I put he him. So I got, you know, I gotta let him know who's boss.

[Dan Koch]

They don't, they don't say Brandon anymore. Are we past Brandon jokes now?

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I, and also I never really understood that whole Brandon thing. Like I didn't, I didn't get the point of what, why that happened.

[Dan Koch]

It's not that good. But it's basically that somebody had a, somebody was yelling. There was a clip where someone was yelling fuck Joe Biden. And like the newscaster or something like misheard it as, let's go Brandon or something like that. Or that was their way of, like, okay, you know, keeping it PG or whatever. And then let's go, Brandon became code for fuck Joe Biden. Super mature stuff. Really good. Really good stuff coming out of that.

[Mason Meninga]

I often told, like, whenever people would tell me, let's go, Brandon. Like, on Twitter or whatever, I would just tell them I go outside too much to care about what any of that means.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, but that's not true because you are, like, one of the most online friends I have, and that's maybe a way in. Or you at least give the impression of being, like, at your keyboard, ready to, you know, strike with. With a calculated wit about, you know, the anti. Jesus, whatever, shit on the right.

[Mason Meninga]

I think it ebbs and flows. Like, there's days where I'm just, like, not on my phone at all. And then there's days where it's like, that's all I'm on. Like, that's all I'm doing. So it ebbs and flows, but the days that I'm off my phone, I'm like, I'm definitely touching grass.

[Dan Koch]

Okay, good. I wanna say a little bit about why you're here and the history of our dynamic, because I sort of realized at beer camp this year in October, like, okay, we have come far enough, we have matured enough. Our friendship has aged like a. Like a fine balsamic vinegar. And I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready to be public. I don't care who knows. I'm ready to shout it from the rooftops, Mason. I don't. I don't care who. Who hears me. We're friends and we can make podcasts together.

[Mason Meninga]

You had to get a whole doctorate degree in psychology to finally admit that.

[Dan Koch]

That'S what it took.

[Mason Meninga]

Wow.

[Dan Koch]

That's what it took for me. Yeah. Yeah.

[Mason Meninga]

That's got to be some of the most intense therapy anyone's ever gone through to actually finally admit that they're a friend.

[Dan Koch]

With me, I had to do a full year of internal family systems before I could realize that there was a part of me that needed you. Yeah. I needed you in my life.

[Mason Meninga]

Gosh, man. The Enneagram work you had to do to figure that out.

[Dan Koch]

That'S the real work. And you know what?

[Mason Meninga]

That's true.

[Dan Koch]

I'm doing the work. I am doing. I am doing that work. I really am. So the best way for me to describe our dynamic is that the joke is that you are super lefty and that I am. I mean, I'm not conservative, so the joke isn't that I'm conservative, but it's that I'm so moderate that I might as well be conservative. Right. That's the bit.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, you truly are my most centrist friend.

[Dan Koch]

Mm.

[Mason Meninga]

Maybe. Actually, maybe not. Like, I can probably think of other centrist friends, but you're the centrist friend that can take the shit that I like to give to a centrist friend.

[Dan Koch]

So.

[Mason Meninga]

Yes.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, there we go.

[Mason Meninga]

That I appreciate.

[Dan Koch]

I'm the most in the moment, psychologically flexible centrist friend that you have and can dish it back.

[Mason Meninga]

And that's right. That's right.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah. Okay. So, like, here's the best way to maybe say it. You used to piss me off so much on Twitter with your hot takes, which were almost always funny and also almost always false. That's how I would say it. And two or three years ago, at beer camp, the opening night, like, Trip was wanting me to do a joke or something about you. And so I said, oh, yeah, there's Mason's there in the back. And I unfollowed him on Twitter six months ago, but the algorithm is now giving me his tweets more often than I saw them when I was following him. Because you just. You've got that. You've got that shit post nectar that social media loves that you do have that little. That little shit inside you that comes out naturally. I do think it's. I don't think you're faking it. I mean, I think you're being yourself, and you are rewarded by the current gods of social media for that behavior.

[Mason Meninga]

I'm also rewarded by the dopamine receptors in my brain, and so. Or at least my dopamine receptors are being rewarded. So I appreciate that. And, you know, it. You know, it's giving me the willing, you know, the will to live. So it gets me out of the bed every day.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, you're. You're lying in bed there, your alarm goes off, and you're like, oh, you pull out your phone, you pull up X and you go, oh, shit. There's a new Dave Ramsey quote that's been taken out of context. You start rolling up your sleeves, cracking your knuckles.

[Mason Meninga]

I've got a good day. Yeah, I've got a good Dave Ramsey.

[Dan Koch]

Mom. Mom, start the shower. Mom, I'm getting up.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, put the coffee on.

[Dan Koch]

Put the coffee on. Mom. We actually have done some. Some podcasting before. Like, are liking this dynamic and want to hear more. We've just mostly done it about music, so I've been on your Black Sheep podcast a couple times and you've been on pretty good vibrations. Is it just that we aired those on the same feed? I can't remember now. It's a couple years.

[Mason Meninga]

I don't remember. What I do remember was we recorded a three hour episode of a emo fantasy draft or some. Or no, was it about hardcore?

[Dan Koch]

It was an emo fantasy draft.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, we did that one, but I feel like we did a hardcore one or a metalcore episode.

[Dan Koch]

That one did air, but the emo draft, we had audio issues. I did not record everyone's audio on my end the correct way. And we lost Cullen, your co host of Black Sheep, entirely. And so it has never aired.

[Mason Meninga]

And it was such a good one. It was just full of nuggets.

[Dan Koch]

It's like the best ones that never air. It's better than you can imagine because there's no way to check against it. So I have this idea of, you know, when I introduce you, I want to add in, you know, He's a podcaster, YouTube, master's degrees, and then the he him below, his name is like the joke, Right? So I wrote a few more of these. I don't want to, like, throw all my pearls before swine here in one swoop, but I. It was pretty quick. I only spent about five minutes coming up with more of these, so I.

[Mason Meninga]

Thought I might find five minutes of your time anyway, so I get it.

[Dan Koch]

Can you give me a 1 to 10 for each of these on like. Okay, 1 to 10. How good is that? As the third bit? Okay, all right, all right. So he's a podcaster, he's a YouTuber, and he would like to sincerely apologize to everyone for having been born a cishet white male. It's Mason Meninga.

[Mason Meninga]

That's me.

[Dan Koch]

How's that one? Give me a one to ten.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I would say, you know, that's a solid six. That's a solid six. Okay, that. That got a little chuckle out of me.

[Dan Koch]

A little chuckle. He's a podcaster, a YouTuber, and I'm genuinely surprised he's not wearing his vintage Che Guevara T shirt this morning. It's Mason Meninga.

[Mason Meninga]

I have no idea what Che Guevara is. Oh, that guy. Okay, I know Che Guevara. Yeah, yeah, the Cuban dude.

[Dan Koch]

Yes.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one, too. You know what's funny? I did a YouTube video once about liberation theology, and for my thumbnail, I had him as like my thumbnail or whatever. And my best friend Cullen, who we Just mentioned just a second ago, I asked him about, like, if I should have that as my thumbnail. And he was like, don't do that, man. And I ended up still doing it. And then I had some people reach out to me who had, like, Cuban ancestry that were like, I'm all about you, Mason. But that one. Let's take him out. And I was like, all right, I'll do it. Whatever.

[Dan Koch]

So, yeah, also Guevara, not really known for his liberation theology.

[Mason Meninga]

It's just.

[Dan Koch]

It's so much. I got a couple more.

[Mason Meninga]

All right, let's hear him.

[Dan Koch]

He's a podcaster. He's a YouTuber, and he would like to acknowledge that this podcast is being recorded on stolen land.

[Mason Meninga]

The good old land acknowledgment.

[Dan Koch]

Okay, last two. He's a podcaster, a YouTuber, and he might get a little lonely sometimes, but with his AOC and Zohar Mamdani bobbleheads, he's never truly alone. It's Mason Meninger.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, they're sitting on my dash right now.

[Dan Koch]

I think either they're in the car with you, or better, they're, like, mounted on your desk where you podcast and make your YouTube videos. And you just have gotten good at kind of gently bumping the desk so that they're, like, agreeing with everything that you say.

[Mason Meninga]

That's right. I want to make sure. Yeah. Sometimes I even have them hug with me. Just a little threesome hug.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, that's good. Last one. Maybe a reach. He's a podcaster. He's a YouTuber. He's got a couple of theology degrees, and if he could, he would use CRISPR technology to splice the hashtag Free Palestine TikTok algorithm directly into his DNA. It's Mason Meninger.

[Mason Meninga]

That's a good one, Dan. That's a good one.

[Dan Koch]

Okay. I thought I might end on that one. All right, let's. Let's keep it going here with something a little sillier, and then we will get into some more serious. Some more serious news items. So this one is a. For fun. I found that there is now a season one of a show streaming. It is called the Promised Land, a comedy of biblical proportions. Crossing the Red Sea was the easy part. Those. The last part are the. The subtitle of. Of this show, and it's. It. It's been made by some folks who worked on the Chosen or who do work on the Chosen. I'm going to share my screen and audio here to play you the season one trailer so that I'm excited About this.

[Mason Meninga]

I'm looking at it up here.

[Dan Koch]

Can hear this for themselves and we can talk about if we think there's anything kind of worthwhile. Anything worthwhile here in this. In this story or whatever. A word from the Lord. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.

[Mason Meninga]

I don't remember any eagles.

[Dan Koch]

My feet are bleeding. Just no. When God called me from the burning bush, I said yes right away. Okay, maybe not right away, but eventually I did say yes. Let me get this straight. All of these people, they all look to you for leadership?

[Mason Meninga]

That's right.

[Dan Koch]

Public speaking has always been my strong suit.

[Mason Meninga]

When I say promised, you say land promised.

[Dan Koch]

When I spoke to Pharaoh on Moses behalf, it went pretty well.

[Mason Meninga]

Besides the place.

[Dan Koch]

I need some advice. From me? No, Miriam, from the Lord. The baby my mother pushed down a river became a political revolutionary. I have spoken. So now I get to take notes while the men are talking. You are an inspiration for women everywhere.

[Mason Meninga]

To touch me, please.

[Dan Koch]

I have the renewed covenant and the new laws for us to follow. Why did God choose me? It is easy to be popular. It is harder to leave. Okay. That's where it gets kind of serious and is not doing the office mockumentary style anymore. If you couldn't tell that was Moses and then Aaron and Miriam Moses's mother complaining about taking notes while the men talk, it's obviously doing like a Parks and Rec office Greg Daniels thing. I don't know. Had you heard about this? What's your take?

[Mason Meninga]

I had not heard about this. This is the first time I'm hearing about it. Here's what I will say. Like, I do like the idea of comedy that's based on the Bible. My initial impression is you really have to know your Bible well, especially that particular story, in order to get some of the humor. And the amount of people that know that story well enough that will also enjoy that humor is. To me, that's like such a small Venn diagram that I'm like, I don't know. I just feel like it's not going to go over particularly well. But I will at least give an A for effort of the attempt.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, it's interesting. Obviously, as you look around the website, they obviously feel like they need sort of similar people who were really into the chosen to be into this. And I think of those viewers who are passionate about the chosen, they're passionate about it because it is a dramatic retelling of the most important story in their lives. The story of Jesus and people have different needs in terms of production quality. And I think that that's really where the Chosen shines. Visually, it's dark, but it looks very good. It's very well acted and it's pretty well written, I would say, especially for Christian tv. This is like a very different cell. It's a different attempt. It's like, let's take the office thing and make that about the Bible and that, like, it might work or might not work. But I guess my thought is just, that's a very different lift than making a drama about a dramatic story. The ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Like, that just is an easier sell in my mind.

[Mason Meninga]

It also seems like just an entirely different audience than who is watching the Chosen. Right? Like, as you said, like the people who are watching the Chosen, It. It's genuinely a very important story in their life. And because the Chosen was such a sincere retelling of that story, I think a lot of people were captured by it. This seems like one of those things where, because there's a humor aspect, I think a lot of people that would watch the Chosen would. Would think, oh, you're making fun of the Bible. Like, that's how they would. That's how it would land to them. So I think the Venn diagram of people who again, know the Bible well, like a lot of people who grew up in evangelicalism but are able to watch something like this and understand that they're not maybe necessarily making fun of the Bible, they're just making a funny version of a Bible story. And again, I just, like, I think the amount of people where those two things will land, it's just a small group of people. I could see a lot of like ex evangelical people enjoying it in the way that, you know, a lot of those sort of folks really love, like, righteous gemstones. But yeah, just the Venn diagram seems like an awfully small niche. Venn diagram.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, I think you're probably right. Okay, so moving to a more serious story. We both actually shared two versions of this story. The idea that Gen Z is in some sense, like maybe they are turning to God and certainly at least spirituality in a way that Gen X and millennials at their same age do not appear to have done. And this has been a talking point that's been kind of floating around for a while now. I've seen multiple articles about it and I've talked with people about it who know the kind of survey landscape, the survey data landscape better than me. So I wanted to just Address the sort of facts, that basic set of facts on the ground. And, but then I do think there's really interesting things to talk about within it. So it's not like there's a revival going on. It's not true that Gen Z are like flocking back to the pews of churches. And I ran this by Ryan Burge, a buddy of mine, graphs about religion substack, author of the book the Nuns and frequent guest of this podcast. And I gave him this little sort of, I said, okay, do you think that this synthesis here is accurate? And he said, yes. So here's the stuff that is true. Among people under 25, only about 13% identify as atheists. And it's 20% boomers, 25% Gen X today identify that way. So that's, that's notable because there were predictions, you know, over the last 10, 15 years, especially kind of new atheist types, that atheism would just continue to rise, that.

[Mason Meninga]

What's the millennial percentage?

[Dan Koch]

You know, it didn't, it didn't give that here, but it's in between the Gen Z and Gen x In the UK, 18 to 24 year olds, 62% say that they are fairly or very spiritual. Only 36% of Gen X, again, that's usually the Gen X is the big comparison group, but there's not like a large scale revival, certainly not in organized religion. It's more like this secularization curve is flattening out. And the way that young people are thinking and talking about and engaging in their faith is distinct from the generation or two before them. They're less likely to call themselves agnostic or atheist and more likely to say that they are spiritual or theist. But they are not really much more likely to attend religious services or to sort of formally identify with a church. I think there are pockets where that's happening. You know, young men on the right, for instance, is maybe where you see that. And it's balanced out by women sort of leaving. But you don't get this big overall generational thing. So they're not back in the pews. But they are significantly, it seems, less dismissive of spirituality and maybe even religion than most secular millennials and definitely Gen Xers were at their age. And that is interesting. So we don't want to oversell it. But I do think there's some reasons there, and I have a few sort of psychological explanations that I'd like to kick around with you. But before I do, like, yeah, what's your, what, what made you want to talk about this general topic in the first place.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah. So I just find this data to be just, to me, just kind of interesting about kind of the state of religiosity in the United States in particular. You know, obviously I know these studies also go to the UK and whatnot. But yeah, in the United States in particular, I just find it really fascinating. We do see kind of, like you said, this sort of flattening of a lack of religiosity among younger people, where I think maybe there was this general assumption that with every consecutive or subsequent generation, that we would see less and less religious people. But like you said, that seems to be flattening out. That I find interesting. Sort of along those lines with, like, the article that I had, and I think you had a similar article. But there does seem to be more people that are young, that are more religious, and probably correspondingly more conservative as well. And we even saw this with some of the Data with the 24 election with gen Z men actually voting for Trump in a higher percentage than millennial men. And so, anyway, I just find that to be really interesting how there does seem to be, in some way, shape or form, maybe a little bit of this, like, conservative Christian surge among young people, always in the context, knowing that it is a small percentage in comparison to the rest of what's happening religiously in America. So anyway, I find that, like, I don't remember if it was in this article or not, but I think I've seen something where among different generations, the generation that might be most likely to actually maybe increase slightly in the Christian church in America is Gen Z rise right now. Like, they're coming to churches at a higher rate than some other generations. So anyway, I just find that to be really interesting.

[Dan Koch]

I think depending on where you look, you can get a little bit of evidence for that. I think the Barna data that's quoted in this Religion News Service article that you shared that will be in the show, notes that, like, they are very slightly like 5% more than millennials attending service at that age. But that is itself an improvement because the number has just been dropping, dropping, dropping with each. So a flattening is a change, right? Even if it's not a boom or a huge revival. It's interesting to talk about the sort of openness to spirituality separate from the more religious belonging that might include regular attendance of anything. It could be a college campus ministry or a church or a small group or whatever. The spirituality thing, you know, tends to be. Obviously, it's more open. It doesn't have Sort of baked in requirements for particular behaviors, attendance, particular ways of praying, anything like that. But I do think that one reason why spirituality might be more palatable for young people today is that a lot of concepts that are sort of go along with spirituality traditionally have become a lot more acceptable. So meditation and mindfulness, specifically. Right. Have. So especially among more educated young folks, sort of college students, for instance, or even just, I guess now, I don't know what a high schooler who's on TikTok and Instagram, I don't know what their information diet is, but I would imagine that even regardless of sort of educational attainment at a personal level, like, you know, just therapeutic language, as well as sort of meditation, mindfulness, basic spirituality language, it's just, like, so much more normalized just to compare to myself. This is anecdotal. I'm 42. When I was 18, 19, 20 in undergrad, I was dealing with clinical depression. At that time, I knew that I was. At that time, I called it depression. A year later, when I was on tour, I told myself, wow, going on tour, getting into this activity really brought me out of that depression that I was in. My father was a therapist. My college, a state college, undoubtedly provided free or very cheap therapy services to students. This is fucking California, okay? I never once thought maybe I should go to therapy. It never crossed my mind. How the hell is that possible? That would not be the case today. I just spent a year working with college students at a university in Washington, and they just are more aware of it. So that, I think, makes spirituality, because that's really just a hop. Skip to prayer or addressing the universe is addressing God in very similar ways psychologically. So that's kind of one thing I wonder if you have any thoughts about just the sort of greater acceptance of that whole side of things, which flows very easily into spirituality. Yeah.

[Mason Meninga]

I'm just so. I'm currently in therapy right now, and.

[Dan Koch]

It's so brave of you. I'm just. I just. Thank you for doing the work.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah. You know what? If I was gonna have a friendship with Dan Koch, the only way I could do that is to be in therapy.

[Dan Koch]

It was a. Yeah, we didn't say that was a requirement. You had to submit, actually a super bill from your clinician to me with the codes. The codes for what your disorders are. I needed to really make sure I knew what I was getting into.

[Mason Meninga]

You and my insurance are getting my claim.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah. That was actually how I sold it to you. I was like, you're gonna have to send this Stuff to your insurance. Anyway, just send it to me first, I'll give it a look. See?

[Mason Meninga]

Exactly, exactly. So what's interesting as like a person who's deeply committed to being a Christian in my Christian faith, being in therapy for the first time in my life and having been in it for the majority of this year at this point is there have been so many moments where, and especially right now I'm doing EMDR therapy and there's times where I'm like, this is just prayer with some electro stimulation going on. Like, but that's kind of what it is. It's like a meditative prayer in some ways. And then even some of the concepts that I'm working through in therapy right now around like giving myself grace, giving others grace, forgiveness, I'm like, these are just, these are concepts that you learn as a 5 year old from Veggie Tales. Right? Like these, these are biblical type of concepts. And so yeah, I think you're right that there isn't much of a leap where if you are a young person and you've been exposed to therapy type of concept, concepts and practices, then there isn't much of a leap then to find something meaningful in spirituality.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah. So moving from spirituality to something a bit more like religion, but not quite attendance. I think there are two factors worth considering. One is meaning, and I kind of mean like capital M meaning. Right, like that young people who are pretty online and pretty aware of what's going on, they know about climate change, they know about sort of Palestine and Israel, they might know about Sudan. There's something interesting there, the fact that Sudan, many more people potentially dying in unjust ways. But that's more of a comment about our media than it is about these individuals. And they know about how divisive culture is in the United States right now, if they're American or Canadian or whatever. So there's a real kind of like, well, what do I hold onto? I think is a very legitimate question for a young person to be asking in that context. And related to that, there are questions of morality and I don't want to be, I don't want to like oversell that. Like, you know, conservatism has what the woke left is missing. And you know, a lot of that is like a lot of that jargon and conversation is sort of politically motivated by bad actors, crisis merchants, I love that term. But I will say, like, I think there are some meaningful gaps in like let's say, let's just say hyper progressive or thoroughly progressive sort of social justice focused. Perspective, especially one that's not anchored in a Christian community. I think most of the people who listen to our shows who are really motivated by social justice concerns are motivated within a Christian context. Liberation theology. Right. Like that is. That's kind of the central idea of your show of people's theology. And that is both thoroughly political, thoroughly hands dirty, but also thoroughly Christian and Christological. But so if you take that part out and you just have the sort of morality police and all the language and all the ways you can go wrong and the original sins of this country and all this stuff, but you don't, you know, like you don't have a mechanism for grace or forgiveness. Maybe you don't exactly. How do you know, okay, do better. But when do you know when it's enough? Like, is there anybody who can be an authority? Because it feels like there can always just be someone who says there's a way to do it better. You never arrive. And something like Christianity or any other sort of longer traditional worldview been around for a while can give you something with a bit more stability that feels more like. I would imagine If I were 19 right now, I would be like really interested in Catholicism, especially for being kind of like one thing over the centuries, you know, I've had my, I've had my, my brushes and my flirting with Catholicism on my own as a millennial, but I would get that. So curious what you think.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I think that's a huge part of especially, you know, as we were talking, not just generally this sort of stabilization of interest in spirituality around Gen zers, but even maybe to some degree their specific interest in Christianity and like you mentioned, where they're actually maybe kind of, or maybe there's a, again, not a revival, but like there's maybe more interest in something like Catholicism or even Eastern Orthodoxy, where you have these very historic traditions. And I think you're right that part of this is, especially if you were a person who grew up center left, non religious, and you see the way that the left often behaves and you see the sort of lack of worldview that really the left is being animated by. Of course you're going to find that, well, is there any meaning to any of this? And especially where you can enter into an online world of total nihilism. We saw that with the Charlie Kirk shooter. Right. He was just in a world of nihilism. You could enter into that or you could find something that has 2000s, 2000 years of history of providing a worldview and framework and practices. And I understand why people then would want to move into that direction now? I think where it gets tricky is a lot of these people, especially those again who grew up maybe like secular center left and are finding Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy compelling. I think maybe part of my concern is what does that mean maybe politically for them, like how are they then becoming politically motivated by those particular traditions? I have a concern around that. However, I don't think the basic assumption, or maybe the basic assumption that we both are having that they're just looking for meaning. Of course it makes sense then why you would find a 2000 year tradition to have something of meaning that you can participate in and actually finally have that in your life. Especially again like you, like, like we're talking about like if you grew up secular left or secular, you know, center left, you didn't have that and so you have something that you can grow up in. I always find it to like think of somebody in that particular world knowing that I actually grew up in that conservative Christian world and know what that worldview is like and I rejected it, you know, in the same way that you did. So that to me is an interesting dynamic to explore is the people that are attracted to especially like evangelicalism, that maybe didn't grow up in that world and knowing that we're the kind of people that grew up in that world, that worldview was impressed upon us. We grew up in it and yet we rejected it. So that to me is like always an interesting dance and dynamic of how do we, how do we navigate that type of person?

[Dan Koch]

I mean, how much of it is just like teenagers are going to rebel against whatever.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I think, I think that's really just a thing. Like I really think that's part of this for sure.

[Dan Koch]

The last bit though is community. And here I'm just kind of speaking more anecdotally. I don't have good data on this, but having spent a year working with college students, one of the things I was most surprised by was the high levels of social anxiety. And I know that that's there's self selection in that. So I'm not trying to say oh, all college kids are socially anxious, but when you combine that with the amount to which their lives take place online compared to the way that our lives took place online, the amount to which they did, you know, it's not hard to draw a parallel there. Like they've gotten a lot fewer reps in, I would imagine the average 20 year old today, let's say, than I had gotten in of like in person conversation. Initiation, inviting people to do stuff physically in the world with our bodies. You know, not just a Snapchat group. Or maybe there are no Snapchat groups. Can you do group snaps or is it only on.

[Mason Meninga]

I'm not on Snapchat, so I have no idea. That sounds like something that you could do, but I have no idea.

[Dan Koch]

Sorry, I need to take a break. I see a cloud going by that I need to stop and yell at. Okay, that sounds very biblical. No, I'm just old man yelling at cloud. But the idea that, like, you know, fandoms have become really big. There's this sort of parasocial thing online. I think that people do find meaning and online community in like, you know, like resistance culture and, you know, all kinds of stuff like that. But there's no real replacement for being in person. And even if, like, for instance, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these gen zers who are not currently attending church and identifying that way, like, give them a few years and that might actually be where it does go. We'll see if the data bears that out. But that wouldn't surprise me because, you know, and especially with AI sort of AI slop kind of filling every little niche of the Internet, it's like there is just something about, like being in a physical space with other people. And church, you know, for its. For its. All its foibles, provides regular opportunity for that and for the same people to build ongoing relationship over time. And I wonder, I'm curious about how that factor will play into this as this generation, you know, gets out of college, enters the workforce and starts to feel like when you're in college, you know, many college students struggle with loneliness. They struggle with social anxiety. That's obviously true. But it's also the time of your life where the format of everything sort of brings the most people around you by default. You know, like everyone's looking for house roommates, so so are you, and they're looking for you as you're looking for them. And no one is married with children, so people hang and they get together and they, you know. So I don't know. That element, I think will just be kind of interesting to see it play out.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah. I actually just spoke last week to a number of college students at the University of Minnesota, and that was one of the things that I touched on about because I talked about growing up in evangelicalism and why I deconstructed and all of that. But one of the things that I talked about was a number of the things that I actually really appreciated about growing up in evangelicalism and one of them was that community. Because so many of these other kind of spaces, I think they often get described as like third spaces, these sort of spaces where you can go to a place and that you aren't paying to be there and you're surrounded by a group of people where you're sort of participating together. We just don't have as many of those spaces as we used to a hundred years ago. And one of the things that I really appreciated about growing up in church was the fact that as, even as a five year old, I had people that weren't relatives, that had no reason to invest in my life, but did anyway because we participated in church together. And there are very few spaces in the world where that type of dynamic exists for a five year old today. Right. Much less a 25 year old. And so I think that that is so unbelievably important for human development for us to be in that kind of community where a, where you could be surrounded by people that don't have any reason to care about you other than the fact that they're agreeing to just participate in this community together. And that I just think is really important for human development. So yeah, I think you're right. I do think in terms of, from you're talking about like social anxiety around gen Zers and maybe that being part of their, part of the reason why they might be interested in church. I've seen something along the lines of like gen zers are first off, they're having less sexual partners, they drink at significantly lower rates than like millennials. And so where, you know, I'm sure that this is, this is probably more of a truism, but let's say, you know, on average, millennials were having sex for the first time at 18 and drinking for the first time at 18. Maybe the truism to that is it's probably maybe delayed for gen Zers by maybe five years. Right.

[Dan Koch]

The average person, if the average person was delayed five years, you would see massive spikes and troughs and stuff. But let's just say a year or two for the average.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, but there's a delay that's going on and I wonder if that delay then means that, you know, give it another couple years and yeah, we'll maybe see this general interest in this kind of community. And one of those types of communities could be church.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, that's interesting. Let's go to. We got two stories left. This next one is one of yours, and it is about Clergy. Well, why don't you set it up?

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, so a couple weeks ago now, there was a protest in Chicago that was protesting ice. I think it was like a detention facility. An ICE detention facility.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, Broadview or something specific. Detention.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah. Somewhere outside of the Chicago area. But yeah, there were a number of clergy there. And one clergy, I'm forgetting the name. Let me see if I can find his name. There was one clergy member in particular who was like pepper sprayed, like point blank pepper spray. I think his name is David Black. And he was just like point blank pepper sprayed by ice. And all of these clergy were very much like protesting nonviolently. But there was a very famous photo or a viral photo that went around of this minister being pepper sprayed that. Yeah, that made the rounds. And so I just find it to be a really compelling image and a compelling type of story of the kind of Christianity I want to see in the world. And so when I see something like this go viral and lots of eyes are on it, especially a lot of people that maybe are center left but aren't religious, and they see this type of religious involvement in the United States, that's the kind of religious involvement, whether or not they are actually compelled enough to, hey, I want to go to that kind of church. Now, that doesn't matter to me, but to me what it does is it sort of rewires one's brain of, oh, you can be religious and protest ice. Like that kind of rewiring that sort of re narrative to me is so important. It's part of what I want to do in the world. We were just at theology beer camp, and I would imagine a lot of theology beer camp people like, that's the kind of religion, the kind of Christianity they want to see in the world where we get to write that narrative and we don't have to just give that up to conservative Catholics and conservative evangelicals in the United States. So I think that really is the main reason why I wanted to share it. Just because I think it's just a compelling type of Christianity that I just want to see more of. And I get really excited when, when photos like this, when stories like this do go a little viral.

[Dan Koch]

I want to ask you a follow up about that because I think that more conservative folks who worry about, let's just call it progressive Christianity, by which I'm using that very broadly, I would include both your kind of liberation theology, very politically motivated brand of progressive Christianity. I would also include, you know, my sort of like traditional liberal Protestantism, which is not quite as politically engaged but still has all the non inerrancy and all that shit, the gay affirmation. I think one concern that well meaning sort of center right Christians can have is that a liberation theology minded faith is actually reducible to politics. That the worry is that we are losing something that is universal and timeless about Christ and whatever else God and you know, the whole shebang, we're losing that in favor of something that is like temporary like so as bad as it may be that like the truth of the gospel or whatever is bigger than the treatment of migrants in El Salvador or, or the treatment of migrants by ICE in Chicago or Los Angeles or whatever like the Venezuelan potential ousting or pick your socio political topic. You put Jesus on one team and not the other team. There's a fear that that's trivializing Christ. I recognize that. What I'm hearing in your description though that I'm finding interesting is what you just said there was not about actually political change. Like the comment that you made was about people who would be turned off to Christianity potentially finding a way in to consider the role of Christianity in the modern world and the teachings of Jesus and all of that stuff. I heard you as animated primarily by your faith, not animated primarily by your politics, which is obviously like that's the bit between us. I just. The joke is that you're always only animated by your politics. But that was interesting to notice that that's not really what you were saying.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I think especially in the mainline liberal world. For 50 plus years the mainline liberal world has done such a poor job at articulating why it stands for the politics it stands for because of its faith. It's been one of those sort of things where I think you're right, where if you went to any general average mainline liberal church, you would think, well this is just a political advocacy group that just meets every Sunday because its preachers, its pastors have been so poor at really articulating here's what we believe theologically, here's what I believe theologically, here's what I'm inviting you to believe theologically. And out of that we have these sort of political leanings, these political stances. And so yeah, the kind of Christianity I want to see in the world is no, I really deeply believe these different theological beliefs about the Trinity, about Jesus, about evil and sin in the world, about salvation. There are deep theological beliefs that I have and out of those I have my political stances and lenience and whatnot and so, yeah, I want to invite other people into that. And yeah, I think like a story like this, again, like an image like that, obviously the work that they were doing in and of itself of protesting, resisting this ICE detention center, I think is meaningful work in and of itself. I do think it happened to be an evangelizing kind of, kind of story, an evangelizing kind of experience where if with a photo like that, I think again, I doubt there's gonna be too many people that see that and go, hey, I wanna participate in a church like that. It could have. But regardless, I think that's the kind of thing that can evangelize people into wanting to be a part of this kind of Christianity. And so to me, that's what like gets me all jazzed up about seeing a photo like that go viral. A story like this go viral is like, wow, this is a really great evangelistic type of story that's happening.

[Dan Koch]

I want to talk about as like a center left, moderate guy, what makes me a little less comfortable with this than say the lunch counter sit ins during the civil rights movement that clergy, especially mainline liberal clergy, were quite involved in, certainly more involved than their conservative counterparts, although I have heard that the percentage is maybe sometimes overblown to sort of give the liberal Protestants make them feel better about themselves. But they were there in a way that the conservatives were not there on the ground getting beat up, getting arrested, et cetera. And a lot of those ministers are sort of heroes to me. What's difficult is the Jim Crow laws were entirely unjust and evil in my view. They are. They're just sort of not defensible on any Christian or political grounds. And the ICE stuff is not that straightforward, unfortunately. If I were an abolish ICE person and I thought there should be no Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency at all, then that might be closer. But I think that would be a huge mistake. I do think it matters that the border is not entirely porous, especially the southern border. And you know, if you don't believe me, just ask anybody who lives down there, like how disruptive that can be to their life. And it's like global migration and, you know, U.S. immigration for a better life is such a complex, thorny topic. Set of topics, really sort of interrelated topics. If ICE were merely enforcing laws on the books and doing so through reasonable best practices of transparency and whatever, then I would actually think I should not. Like, that's their job. Like, I would not protest that. I would happily be friends with an ICE agent who was Going about his or her work in that manner, that would be fine. I would not have a moral problem with that. We have immigration laws. We are allowed to enforce them. But what's clear to me, and I think clear to anybody paying attention to being honest, is that the Trump administration is specifically pushing the boundaries of cruelty. They are pushing the boundaries of, like, you know, there was all those stories in Los Angeles, for instance, about they were detaining people who would show up for their court proceeding only to have the prosecutor drop the case and have them escorted into the back to be detained by ICE and removed without a trial. And now that's. I know that that's not technically the same as, like, being denied a fair trial or whatever. I guess legally that's not exactly the same thing as just like, not giving a criminal defendant a trial, but it is functionally the same. It's saying, come participate in the proper process for this to see if you can stay here. Psych. We're just, we're going to use that as a way to grab you. I know there was a law in Washington, or I don't know if his. I don't know if a state or federal that was going around getting signatures that would, that, as I understand it, would have given ICE the ability to take children, undocumented children, from their elementary and junior high schools without a parent consent. Like, this is fucked up. Like, that stuff is easy for me to say. Yeah, protest that that is not how we do things, even if it is effective at deterring immigration. Like, and I, I recognize that that might be some people's job. They, that's their job is to deter immigration from other countries. That is sort of what they're in the administration to do. And there may be a role for that. But as a Christian, I don't feel like I'm allowed to be on the side of that if that involves cruelty on purpose, for the psychological effect of the cruelty, that might be effective. But that's not Christ. Like, Like, I do not think Jesus would be like, well, they did technically break the law, you know, like, what now? They might need to go back. That, that might need to happen for some individuals, but the methods are what I object to. So I don't know. I guess I don't have a problem with what these clergy are doing. It's just that when I start thinking about legality and all that, it's like, part of me wishes this was more of a straightforward issue, like the civil.

[Mason Meninga]

Rights movement, just so I'll sort of show my, my Cards like, I am very far on the left when it comes to how I think about immigration, the border. I'm very much like, I'm very compelled by abolishing state borders. I'm very much in the anarchist camp. With that said, knowing that I live with a lot of people who aren't obviously in that far of a left world, I do try to understand where are they coming from. So listening to you talk about this and kind of where you're at, I think this is part of the reason why we are seeing people, especially mainline liberal type of clergy, protesting at ICE detention centers now versus during, let's say the Obama administration, who Obama was deporting quite a few people. I don't think he's going to, I don't think he ever deported quite as many people as the Trump administration is trying to deport.

[Dan Koch]

But I do, I do think he did it more than like one of his terms was more deportations than Trump's first term.

[Mason Meninga]

Right.

[Dan Koch]

I think that's true.

[Mason Meninga]

I think where the protest now, obviously part of this is, you know, there's probably just this, you know, if a Democrat does it, we're going to cover, you know, we're not going to take a look at it, we're going to meet ignorant to it. I think there's part of that. I also do think part of it is the stories of deportations that were happening under the Obama administration were not as cruel as the stories that we are seeing right now. And I think that is, I think, the keen insight that you're bringing up. Dan, if you are somebody who's kind of more center left of how should I think about the protesting of this, Even if you believe that ICE should be a federal organization that exists, I think it's the cruelty that people are really maybe most appalled by. And that's why we see Christian clergy protesting it. And I think maybe that's the difference versus the Obama administration or even the Biden administration. He had a lot of deportations as well.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, I did just check the actual raw numbers. And Trump deported fewer than a million officially in his first term. And both of Obama's terms were more 1.2 and 1.6 million official deportations. But like the kids in cages, stuff like that was a first Trump term news story. And some people pointed out, I believe factually that the separating of the families at the facilities that had begun or had at least happened under Obama, that that was not a new policy for Trump. And you, you know, I think it's fair to wonder like, why wasn't there reporting about that? Because it was certainly going on, at least some. It might not have been as much, I don't know how much it went on, but it did go on. And, and you know, I think someone on the right would tend to sort of blame the left leaning bias of major media outlets for their lack of coverage, sort of giving Obama a pass on moral issues, that kind of a thing. That could be part of it. I also think that had that become a news story under Obama, they would have changed it. Like, he would have been like, yeah, we have immediately discontinued this policy, you know, like, because, because it would have been in his interest to discontinue that policy. He was not going for. He did want to deport people, but he didn't want to do it in a big, flashy, newsy kind of a way. And Trump does. The cruelty is the point in part for him. And I think that I would just say to a more conservative listener that to me is a meaningful distinction that Trump genuinely wants to, I believe he genuinely wants to psychologically terrorize the type of people who would come here out of like, absolute desperation to not come here. And I, I can't really get behind that. Like, like, that's just, that's too far. That, that feels like that. It just, I, I feel like it's boring, but it just feels unchristian to me, like in a very basic sense. And so, yeah, Obama's still responsible for many things that I would disagree with, but I do think he would have been responsive to pressure in a different way, as opposed to doubling or tripling down, opening the alligator, Alcatraz, making fucking T shirts about that, you know, that whole thing.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I think you're totally right. Again, obviously I'm not a particularly big Obama fan, but for reasons than me. But I'm also, I can assure you, I'm not the kind of person that just thinks, well, both Democrats and, and, and Republicans are, are the same. Like, I don't try to conflate them as the same at all. As somebody who obviously disagrees with a lot of Democrats continually. I also recognize there is a stark difference. And one of those stark differences is the cruelty at this point, at least from what I'm seeing in conservative politics, especially when it comes to immigration. But among other things, the cruelty is the point at this point. And that seems to be different from like, I remember during, like the, the Bush administration as a kid. Like, obviously at that time I was deeply conservative and I could have told you, like, it was because like I'm a capitalist and because, you know, we need to defend America's honor because of what they did and to 9, 11 or whatever. Like but, but the cruelty wasn't the point. At that point it seemed like in Republican politics, I remember that whole clip of when McCain was debating Obama and this woman accuses him to be an Arab or whatever and he really wanted to double down of like we have clear differences, but this man is a man with integrity and that is not the Republican Party at this point anymore. And I'm just like that to me seems to be such a stark difference. And I think you're, you've got a keen insight here. That is what I think a lot of people are protesting even if they're not like abolish ICE or an abolish like the state boundaries. And there might be, you know, there probably were people at the protest that have that kind of understanding. But certainly I think the vast majority of, you know, when we see like the no Kings protests going on, most people don't have that political stance of like abolish ice. I think a lot of them are just like the cruelty just seems out of line and we got to do something about that.

[Dan Koch]

And actually if you do, if you are tempted to bring in abolish ICE or defund the police or from the river to the Sea Palestine shall be free, sign with you to a no Kings protest. Do me a favor, just leave that sign at home. Let's not sully this kind of centrist movement with far left ideology. Thank you very much.

[Mason Meninga]

Some change is possible.

[Dan Koch]

Incremental change. Incremental change. Not as good. Not as good as hell. No, we won't go. The world moves fast. Your workday even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use. Helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn [e-mail] M365 copilot Kay Jewelers Black Friday sale is on. Now's the time to get up to 50 off Black Friday deals. With savings this big, you can get gifts for everyone on your list.

[Mason Meninga]

Plus, if Black Friday lines aren't your.

[Dan Koch]

Thing, skip em at Kaye. You can buy online and pick up in store or get free shipping right to your home. This holiday season. Unwrap love and savings with Kay. Exclusions apply. See kay.com exclusions for details. Okay, we got one more story here and I do feel like we've maybe buried the lead because we've got. The final story is about a gay billionaire talking about the Antichrist. And I just don't think you're not going to get very many one sentence descriptors on religion news roundup that are quite as good as that thing.

[Mason Meninga]

Sounds like an Onion headliner or something, doesn't it?

[Dan Koch]

It does, yeah. But Peter Thiel, you know, so early Trump supporter out of Silicon Valley, if not the most, one of the most successful venture capitalists of all time. He gave a series of four, like ticketed lectures with no recordings allowed in San Francisco earlier this year that were all about his ideas around the Antichrist. What do we need to say about this? Listeners, I assume have some basic understanding, but I'll just do it really quick. So the Antichrist is a figure. The actual word comes from Paul or a letter ascribed to Paul as a verb. Like something is Antichrist if it is sort of against what Christ did and represented in the world and is calling people to here and now. But via particular readings of the books of Daniel and Revelation and a few little bits of Jesus and Paul thrown in like salt and pepper into the soup. You have this idea, popular in the Left behind series and other things, of an Antichrist, a single figure that is predicted in these apocalyptic writings in the Bible who will in the future take power over the entire world for a brief period of time, up to seven years on the main understanding, and that this will be related to the second coming of Jesus in some way. Either the Rapture comes before the Antichrist, you can flip those things around in the order without getting into details. This particular view of Bible and end times is, from my perspective, profoundly inherently unstable. Contradicts itself constantly. There's very little evidence that this worldview is accurate at all. But it's popular and Thiel knows that it's popular. It's unclear exactly. We talk about like what he said and didn't say. You know, there's been some recordings have been given to places like the Guardian who have written pieces about it. That's the main article that we'll be linking to in the show Notes. Is this Guardian piece anything else there, Mason? Like that I should put in this kind of headline section about this story?

[Mason Meninga]

Not that I do have kind of more cultural commentary about this specific story that I want to talk about. But yeah, I think you've summarized it pretty well.

[Dan Koch]

Okay, well, why don't you get into that at some Point I want to get into, honestly, like the biblical hermeneutics of this, the sort of way of reading the text and the way that Teal is framing this stuff. Also, I've got one more little joke at your expense I'm excited about. So why don't you go ahead and give me your cultural context stuff that you're wanting to do here.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah. So I don't know if Peter Thiel identifies as a Christian. I did just like Google it. And AI on Google claims that he has.

[Dan Koch]

He describes himself as small o orthodox Christian. He's also though he's openly gay and that already is like most people who would describe themselves as small orthodox Christians of any type are not gay affirming. So there's already some interesting tension there that we might come back to.

[Mason Meninga]

I think what is interesting maybe culturally of like with Teal, obviously now talking about the Antichrist, there seems to be this cultural movement of people especially very. Whether they're influential because they have a lot of money like Teal, or they have a lot of cultural power. There are. It just seems like in this last year or two, there have been a lot of people with a lot of influence, a lot of power, and almost all of them are white men that have come out as sort of either identifying as Christian or culturally Christian and are now some examples.

[Dan Koch]

Richard Dawkins is saying that Richard Dawkins.

[Mason Meninga]

Christian Elon Musk I think has said that he's culturally Christian.

[Dan Koch]

Joe Rogan has much more often will have Christians on the podcast and has expressed some sort of openness. I feel like I hear different versions of that.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, yeah, maybe to a lesser power degree. Russell Brand has been going on this whole almost photo op of how he's a new Christian. And so there just has been this movement of people that. And I've seen every now and then I'll see like Relevant magazine talk about like this new person who has a lot of power, influence or is very famous is now identifying as Christian. And I think it also maybe taps into again kind of this Gen Z conversation that we were having. But what I find really interesting is especially someone like Elon Musk or Richard Dawkins. They wouldn't say this, but I would argue that a big reason why that they are now identifying especially as culturally Christian or even Jordan Peterson would be another example of this is a lot of them are really committed to the conservative politics that a lot of conservative Christianity is obviously committed to. And it almost is one of these things where they just sort of feel left out if they're conservative without having the sort of worldview of being conservative, which obviously in America means that you probably should be a Christian, you gotta have that sort of conservative Christian worldview. And so it's interesting to see so many of them kind of move into this, whether they describe it as cultural Christian worldview or whether they actually become a Christian and participate in religious life as a Christian. I just find that fascinating because again, as a kid who grew up evangelical, who was appalled by the claims that someone like Richard Dawkins was making. If I were a influencer Christian back in 2001, and I was debating Richard Dawkins or trying to knock down all of his arguments, and now he just gets to come along and just be a Christian without having to go through all the repentance that I would have had to go through as a kid. And I just would have been like, what? You don't get to just do. You don't get to have this cultural influence in Christianity. Like, like, you get to. You might be able to be quiet as a Christian. Like, maybe you get to go to church and you get to identify as a Christian, but you don't get to have, like. Like, you don't get to teach people about Christianity.

[Dan Koch]

No.

[Mason Meninga]

Like, you gotta earn until.

[Dan Koch]

And until you have spent cumulative 100 hours worrying that you're going to hell after masturbating, you do not get to. You have this label.

[Mason Meninga]

Richard Dawkins has to memorize every silly song with Larry before he gets to start talking about conservative Christianity.

[Dan Koch]

Right? Yeah.

[Mason Meninga]

So again, whether or not Peter Thiel, I don't know how long he's identified as a Christian or not, but for whatever reason, that story just reminded me.

[Dan Koch]

I think about 10 years or so is my understanding.

[Mason Meninga]

But yes, okay. But, yeah, this story reminds me of a lot of these people who weren't exactly, like, they weren't known for their power for being Christian. Right? Like, they weren't pastors, they weren't theologians, they weren't even, like, Christian commentators. They're just people who happen to be rich or happen to have a lot of power or even were anti Christian at one point. Right? That was their whole shtick. And now they're coming to influence in Christianity. That, to me is like, just to me. I don't know if I have really any thoughts about it other than I find that fascinating.

[Dan Koch]

I think the Silicon Valley and power broker conversation is really interesting. Thankfully, I just did a whole episode on that just a month or two ago. So you can find that in the Feed in the religion on the mind feed. Mason, I know you're not a big listener, so you probably didn't see that.

[Mason Meninga]

I really liked it way more when it was you have permission. So I unsubscribed after that.

[Dan Koch]

You only like my early stuff.

[Mason Meninga]

That's right. Yeah. I'm a true og. I'm the true Dan Koch hipster.

[Dan Koch]

That's perfect. Yeah. So I'll set that aside because I think there are really good questions about sort of power and access to power and what are like, how are people sort of siling up to teal using Christian language? And now as a venture capitalist, it's like if you don't have a Christianity angle, you're sort of one down from your competitors. And Zoe Bernard, who's the journalist who cover Silicon Valley, she spoke very well about that on that episode. So I'll let you listen to that if you guys want to hear that angle. But I find this. I wanted to throw something out here. I think here's some Mason catnip for you a little bit or deconstruction catnip. I would say that what Thiel is doing by choosing to focus on certain themes in apocalyptic scripture, you know, like he talks about like climate and AI doomerism as like levers that a potential Antichrist figure or group might use to make the world scared and usher in a one world sort of totalitarian government, which by the way, 1995 called and it wants its scare tactics back. And my 13 year old self is like almost afraid when I hear that. But I also realize, oh wow, I've really done a lot of work on this topic because I don't worry about it anymore, but to focus on that. So that's a theme and there's some interesting ideas there. I think there can be interesting conversations about the fact that our religious and wisdom tradition contains that kind of literature and we could, we could think about what that might mean for us. But he's, he's talking about that at the expense of anything that Jesus seemed to be primarily committed to, which was like caring for the marginalized, the poor, you know, like teal is, you know, pretty anti charity as I understand it. I mean he is one of the wealthiest people in the world. And you know, he's not talking about wealth. He's not talking about the fact that like he could probably single handedly end malaria if he wanted to. Now maybe there are some real logistical problems. I don't want to sort of like I do have a problem with a sort of caricature that billionaires could just solve the world's problems if they just had a little more goodness in them. I think that's probably a little too simple. But Mason, how many times as a liberal Christian have you been accused of picking and choosing which parts of scripture you are going to focus on?

[Mason Meninga]

I mean, if, if I had a nickel, every time, I would be a billionaire.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah. And, and it's like, so now Teal can do whatever the fuck he wants. I, I'm, I'm fine picking and choosing. I, I actually think that that's inevitable and everybody does that because the Bible does not line up.

[Mason Meninga]

And don't you always want to pick and choose the best fruit? Like, isn't that kind of the point when you pick cherries, you want to pick and choose the right cherries, Right?

[Dan Koch]

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, this idea that like he's, he can do four lectures on how climate anxiety might usher in the apocalypse or something when like, you know, his preferred administration, you know, is just like using religious and biblical imagery to justify, you know, terrorizing poor people is. And you want to mention, just like, you know, Palantir, one of his big companies, is like a major defense contractor. And I also, unlike you, I would assume, do not have a default moral problem with national defense via military grade weapons and things like that. I do think that's probably just a reality in the modern world. So it's not that I think all of that is always bad, but it is a little incongruous with the person of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels. And yeah, so there's a real, just like a picking and choosing thing here that I'm picking up on a little lighthearted thing here. Mason. One of the things I could have done at the beginning too, for that first opening line was he's a podcaster, he's a YouTuber, he's got some theology degrees, and I'm surprised that he wasn't at one of these recent Peter Thiel talks. Not in the audience with a bunch of fleece vested phonies, as Mason would think of them, but with the Church of Satan protesters outside wearing a pastiche of studded leather, dripping fake blood and mascara. One guy in a unicorn and horse face mask apparently made entirely out of leather, passing out copies of the Satanic Bible and really making a difference in their local community.

[Mason Meninga]

Sounds like one of the students at.

[Dan Koch]

My seminary that all three of them could have been. I actually, this, this paragraph from the Guardian article is just worth reading. Quote, a trio of self described Satanist. Satanists, dressed in black costumes with goth makeup, walked up and down the line of attenders carrying a goblet of red liquid with a small plastic replica of a bone quote. Will you bring our dark Lord Peter Thiel this baby's blood? They asked. Then they performed what they called a dark ritual, dancing slowly in a circle to Mozart's Requiem in D minor, which ended with them writhing on the city sidewalk and yelling, take us to your personal hell. Thank you for being our dark lord.

[Mason Meninga]

And who says atheists? Atheism isn't a religion?

[Dan Koch]

Who says. Who says Satanists don't have a sense of humor? I want to. I do want to talk about the kind of biblical thing here. There, you know, I. He could again, he can pick and choose and do whatever he wants, but I think there is a tension. It's not. There are not a lot of views of the Bible that will get you both gay affirmation on the one hand and like the predictive. The future prediction powers of Daniel and Revelation.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, that's also a pretty small Venn diagram speaking.

[Dan Koch]

Maybe everybody who likes the Promised Land would love these Peter Thiel lectures. Maybe that's the Venn diagram.

[Mason Meninga]

There it is. Yeah. Maybe his next talk will just be a showing of. Yeah, the Promised Land.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, but like, do you know what I'm saying? Like, typically, there might be a way to do it and we could maybe talk about how Thiel has talked about Rene Girard and like Carl Jung and some of these ways of thinking about the text and Nietzsche and stuff. But, like, generally speaking, if you think that the Bible is like, telling the truth in a deep way, especially in a sort of predictive way, then you tend to also say that gay sex is wrong. Very few people end up with these two views at the same time.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I could see them saying, like, not only is it predictive, the Bible is predictive, but it's also prescriptive. And so, yeah, it's predictive about the rapture and it's also prescriptive about the kind of sex you can have.

[Dan Koch]

We need a third one to make it a real evangelical sermon.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, we need to get a little.

[Dan Koch]

Triage this morning, guys. I'm going to talk about how the Bible. It's predictive, it's prescriptive. And what's the third one? And it's personal. To look upwards and it's personal. There we go. That's the personal relationship part. Okay, that's right.

[Mason Meninga]

That's right.

[Dan Koch]

Okay, there we go. That. That sermon is going viral. For sure. John Mark Comer. Who would do. Who would. Who would give that sermon? Not John Mark Comer.

[Mason Meninga]

The. The personal predictive and.

[Dan Koch]

And prescriptive.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, that's pretty. That's pretty John Piper. Ish.

[Dan Koch]

That's John Piper. Yeah. It feels reformed. Okay.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, the Bible's also. Piper.

[Dan Koch]

It's the fourth P.1 thing. Just. Just because I feel like nobody knows this even like among my friends and stuff. Mason, do you know this, Mason? That. The sort of mainstream climate change modelers. So they're scientists, but they're the data modeling folks. Right. Some of them work at the UN and places like that.

[Mason Meninga]

Right.

[Dan Koch]

The modelers have like revised their predictions from a few years ago when books like the Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells were, you know, on every bookshop, corner shelf. I read that book with great trepidation and fear and trembling that like, basically the. We're probably headed to 4 or 5 degrees Celsius has been knocked down to. We're probably heading to 2 or 3 degrees Celsius. As a general, that's a very simple Overview.

[Mason Meninga]

In like 50 years, do they have.

[Dan Koch]

Like a year just like that's where we're headed. Like if we just don't, like that's just where they think we're headed. If we don't really make any changes. That's the sort of idea, right? Some, like, I'm sure they assume some technological, you know, solar will continue and these things will continue. And you know, there's a birth rate crisis potentially in a lot of parts of the world. And so that might be factoring in. And so like. But that is a big difference. That might be the difference between, you know, something like a billion climate refugees in the next 50 years, which is I think, kind of how Wallace Wells framed it in the Uninhabitable Earth. Sort of some of the worst case ones or. And like a few million, five million climate refugees, which would be bad. You know, Syria had less than a million and it was pretty disruptive. But like a billion, like you know, truly having parts of the earth that were formidably formerly habitable be uninhabitable at large swathes of land and like. So my first question is, do you know that this has been changing or is that news to you?

[Mason Meninga]

That is news to me. So I'll be one of the majority of your friends.

[Dan Koch]

I can't help but get curious about this. That is like such good news. Why. Why is no one talking about it? And, and I, I'd be open to Other explanations, listeners, if you have an alternate explanation, email me. The email is in the show notes. But I, I think that for liberals, Democrat leaners, leftists, everybody on the left side of the spectrum, anxiety and the, and the certain knowledge that we are headed for climate catastrophe has been so baked into not just our messaging, but maybe even like our world view that it's like, it's almost an article of faith now. Like. And I wanna, I wanna do another, I wanna do an episode. We're gonna talk about this on the next Generation Gap Culture Hour. This like bringing kids into the world thing, which I think is a very old idea. And there's just sort of always new versions of it given current events. But like that whole thing as like, yeah, we. Overpopulation is really probably the issue. And because climate collapse and all this stuff and it's like the, the people who are writing about this stuff for the fucking Atlantic and New York Times, those people are saying it's getting significantly better the outlook. And not to say it's solved. I mean, not, not to say there's no climate change, nothing like that, but just like the real doomsday shit has become officially like a lot less likely. And it is curious to me that nobody seems to want to talk about this.

[Mason Meninga]

Right. Well, I, I'm sure there's psychological stuff that you could talk about of like having fear being a motivating factor. Obviously there's, there's fear around the right or the, the right creates its own fear of creating scapegoats and whatnot.

[Dan Koch]

Peter was creating fear that climate anxiety and all these things are going to lead to one world government. That's a fear tactic. Yeah.

[Mason Meninga]

Right. So. But the left does that too, especially around climate change, around creating that sort of fear and anxiety. And therefore we should create the kind of politics that they want created around that. And there might be, I'm not trying to, again, trying to conflate the two. Like there might actually, obviously there is legitimate anxiety to maybe be had. There's maybe legitimate fear to be had based on the actual empirical evidence that we have about certain things like climate change. Right. So there is that. But if that narrative changes or if that some of that evidence changes like you, like you're saying, then maybe the fear that and the anxiety that we have, maybe we just have to be more nuanced or calculated around that. And you're right. Like for whatever reason, this is just not clearly, it's not getting reported to me, so I don't know who it's getting reported to. But it's definitely not getting reported to me.

[Dan Koch]

Do you like what happened internally for you as I shared that summary of the findings? Like, what did you feel? Did you notice anything?

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I was like, hell yeah. Finally some fucking good news.

[Dan Koch]

Okay, that's good.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, yeah. I've never like. I think maybe we were just briefly talking about this at beer camp. I'm not like a sort of doomerism kind of.

[Dan Koch]

It's not really your personality, honestly.

[Mason Meninga]

I'm like, I actually am the like so hopefully optimistic about so many things in my own personal life, whether it comes to like world. Like, I'm so optimistic about things.

[Dan Koch]

Maybe that explains your far left politics. You're just so hopeful that you don't realize it can't work.

[Mason Meninga]

I probably, like, it's probably the ignorance is bliss type of thing.

[Dan Koch]

I'm half kidding about that.

[Mason Meninga]

It's probably a real thing. Yeah. Or I'm able to just like, maybe I'm able to cover it up by the fact that I'm like, well, you know what? The kingdom of God, it's at hand, but it for sure is not here yet. But Jesus will for sure make that happen someday. Like, maybe I just have so much optimism around that at some point that I'm like, well, at some point we got a long time. Eternity is a long time for that to happen.

[Dan Koch]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess though, this comes up for me a lot and it's kind of actually, we can end here. This connects back to the conversation about the clergy and ice and how you. Your takeaway there was essentially an evangelistic takeaway. I feel like compared to a lot of my fellow progressive Christians or liberal Christians, those of us, you, myself, most of our friends in this world, most of the people at beer camp, that compared to you guys, I just feel less personal confidence and a lot of my sort of reduced feeling of faithfulness is around. Well, there are gonna be versions. I could mean there's a version of the kingdom of heaven that I can get behind. Certainly conceptually. It can certainly kind of orient my personal morality the way that I'd like my family to be in the world morally and decisions that we make. And you know, it influences like my wife is really into like zero waste and like reusing things and sustainability and my faith is like a. That's an easy in for me. Like I'm not going to be able to put as much work into it as she is, but I participate pretty full throatedly in the stuff that she kind of sets up for us and the Processes that she gets going for our household, for instance. And like, so that. That's easy. But you talking about like when Jesus will eventually make things right, like when we get into these kinds of things, afterlife or you know, kingdom of heaven coming to earth, like some sort of future where it genuinely does get worked out, where the lion really does in some sense lay down with the lamb. I have a hard time. Like I feel like my confidence in that outcome when I was younger has been undercut by a lot of the things that have allowed me to keep my faith. But my felt confidence is lower. And so I don't go there personally. Psychologically, I don't go there as often because it doesn't. It is not as robust of a place to land for me. I wanted to just kind of share that and see.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah.

[Dan Koch]

How you would respond.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, I think for me it's like I see these little glimpses of when I'm. Whether it's maybe at my church community or other parts of my community here in the Twin Cities. Like I see these sort of glimpses of what I would describe as like a glimpse of into the kingdom of God. And I like, again, as like an optimist, I'm just like, that can happen someday. Like that really actually can happen someday where everybody in this world gets to experience this kind of community where we're at one with one another. Like, I see that every now and then and I'm like, that is actually possible. Like I re. And maybe it's just because like I'm a process theology guy or whatever, but I'm like, I think, like, I think this kind of stuff is actually possible. Like this world, this future that we have set out for us is actually not set out for us. Like it's not been determined. So there really is in my understanding of things in my worldview, my hope is that none of this has actually been already predetermined. So we get to actually have these moments where we can actually change the world. Like, I really believe that. And so again, I'm just this kind of like hopeful optimist at times. And yeah, when I see those kind of glimpses of that, that's what really gets me going and that's what animates me more to like, I want to see more of this.

[Dan Koch]

Well, it makes sense a little bit of your worldview to me because like I was tempted to make the joke. We can change the world through free buses and city owned grocery stores to do a Mamdani joke, but that's actually not what you mean, like. And that. So that. That joke is silly, but it actually kind of misses the point. Like, I'm appreciating this about you, you know, this being actually our first, like, real podcast conversation that wasn't sort of about music, you know, like.

[Mason Meninga]

Right, right.

[Dan Koch]

So I am appreciating that this is really motivated by your faith more than your politics. And for you, the politics flow out of the faith. That's how I would see it, and that's encouraging. And that's. Let's end on a note of encouragement. Who thought. Who would have thought that the Peter Thiel Antichrist segment would end like this? Wow.

[Mason Meninga]

Mason Meninga is actually a Christian. Who would have thought.

[Dan Koch]

I thought it was Menenja. Meninga.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, you said it wrong the entire time, which to me was funny. That was one of the funny things about it for me. So that's why I didn't want to say it.

[Dan Koch]

Right. Say it right.

[Mason Meninga]

Meninga.

[Dan Koch]

Okay. So I used to say Meninga. Menenja. Menenga. Yeah. I used to say Meninga. Then I thought it was, oh, it's Meninga, but it's Meninga. Meninga.

[Mason Meninga]

You were getting there. Like, I saw the steps being taken. I saw the learning happen.

[Dan Koch]

Well, you know what? You got to stand up for yourself. You should have told me earlier.

[Mason Meninga]

I mean, I. I could have. I mean, it feels like it's. Again, I found it funny. That's. That's why I enjoyed it. Like, that's why I didn't want to say anything.

[Dan Koch]

I'll get it right.

[Mason Meninga]

Love it.

[Dan Koch]

I'll get it right next time. And I do think there will be a next time because this went pretty fucking well in my mind.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah.

[Dan Koch]

Listeners, tell me if you agree.

[Mason Meninga]

Yeah, we're. We're at an hour and 30 minutes. It's lunchtime for me, so I need to go eat lunch. But, yeah, this has been great. I would love to do this again with you, Dan.

[Dan Koch]

Okay. Thanks so much, Mason. Appreciate it. We'll also have a link to your website, which will have links to all the podcasts and everything that you do.

[Mason Meninga]

That's right.

[Dan Koch]

Peace. Rock and roll.