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- [00:00]
A
Sky, we have stumbled upon a billion dollar idea here, and I just want to know what my cut's going to be.
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B
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Skypod, brought to you by Holy Post Media and Sanford and Son Salvage. Grateful to have you with us today. I am here with my friend Drew Dick. How are you, Drew?
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A
I'm not doing so good, sky, because my back is out.
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B
Oh, no.
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A
And I wish I could say I put it out running a triathlon or something, but I think I just turned the wrong way or slept on it weird. And so now I'm living in terror of rogue sneezes that might make it worse.
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B
Okay, we are losing everyone under the age of 40.
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A
I'm telling them what awaits them in their 40s. Okay, yeah, late 40s in my case.
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B
I have to admit, though, I threw my back out a number of times like that when I was in my 20s.
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A
Yeah, it happens.
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B
It happens. It's awful when you're. When your lower back. It's your lower back, I assume.
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A
No, actually, it's my mid. More like my neck, actually. Yeah, you'd think lower back, but no, it's more like my neck, but I got a couple muscle relaxers in me.
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B
Great.
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A
You might get the unfiltered Drew today.
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B
All right, we'll find out what's really lurking under the surface. So we're doing a Drew's News episode. This is one where you scour the Internet, bring us stories that may or may not have any relevance to our lives, but that you want to talk about. And it's a little glimpse into our free newsletter, which is the Drew's Newsletter, which goes out every week. It's free. You can sign up for it@holypost.com and you will get Drew's musings from around the Internet, often related to issues of faith, the church, the gospel, Christianity, whatever it might be. And yeah, it's a highly entertaining newsletter. It's got a little bit of snark, a little bit of wink, a little bit of Canadian pizzazz. Is there such a thing?
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A
Oh, yeah.
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B
Is Canadian pizzazz like mayo with a little bit of pepper?
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A
They just think pizzazz. Yes, and you're right, it's free. But I hope it's not like they said of some preacher, he charged nothing for his preaching and it was worth it.
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B
What would be the case? What is considered the Las Vegas of Canada? Is there such a place?
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A
We have a Las Vegas. We have. I mean, where I'm from, Alberta is the Texas of Canada, because we got cowboys and farmland and it's big. Yeah. But I don't think we have a Vegas. Like what. What happens there stays there. And it's maybe Vancouver.
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B
It's not like various establishments in the US where gambling and casinos are allowed on Native American. That's different.
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A
Yes. No, no, no, I think it's the same. Is it? Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to remember. I think that's true. But there's not like a whole city dedicated to sin like you filthy Americans have.
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B
Well, you're all liberal, progressive, secular Canadians. It's the whole country.
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A
Oh, yeah, we love assisted suicide. So, you know, I can't moral you. Lecture you on morals.
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B
No, you can't. Okay, let's get into it. What stories have you brought us that you want to talk about today?
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A
Yes, this is a entertaining but depressing story to start with. The Secretary of Defense or isn't it? Department of War? Anyway, Pete Hegseth recently read a fake Bible quote at a prayer service at the Pentagon. And the entertaining thing, at least to me being a child of the 90s, was that not only did the verse not exist in the Bible like he claimed, but it's actually a rough quote from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 movie Pulp Fiction. And I know you're a Christian, so you haven't watched that sky, but sadly I have.
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B
Canadian Christian.
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A
Yeah, Christian. And it's the little speech that Samuel L. Jackson's character gives. He's a hitman in the movie right before he wastes someone, like he's going to shoot someone, and he reads this scary Bible sounding quote.
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B
Well, no, it's more than a Bible sounding quote because he references Ezekiel 25:17 and then he gives this wrathful, angry monologue quoting. Well, you think it's quoting scripture. Ezekiel 25:17.
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A
And it sounds kind of Scripturesque.
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B
Yeah. And it's terrifying. And it's all about the wrath of God and vengeance. And then he assassinates people, basically. And it's one of the opening scenes of the movie. And I remember that movie came out when I was a college student and it was like a huge phenomenon. Like all young men loved this movie. And we of course saw it. And I have to admit I saw it more than once. And when he references Ezekiel 25:17, of course I was studying the Bible at the time. So I'm turning in Ezekiel 25:17. I'm like, what? That's not what it says.
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A
It sounds legit.
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B
But then you go there, yeah, it's not really in the Bible. It's just Fabric. I mean, it's loosely drawing from some phrases here and there, but it's not at all really in the Bible. Okay, so that's Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, all that. That came out in 1994. The fact that the Secretary of Defense, who has very much politicized his faith and inserts Christianity regularly into the workings of the Pentagon, praying for troops, holding worship services in the Pentagon, having Doug Wilson, the Christian nationalist pastor at the Pentagon, doing like, it's all his. It's like a thing he does. He cites this prayer, and actually he
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A
invited people in the audience to pray it with him.
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B
Yes, that's the wise quoting. He says it comes from Ezekiel 25:17. And then he quotes Pulp Fiction. He doesn't know that it's fabricated, that it's not real. And oh, my gosh, I think he
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A
thought it was real. I think he thought it was real. And apparently, a little more context. Apparently it was used, he said, by troops before the mission that was to rescue the downed pilot in Iran this month. And so, yeah. Okay, that's wild.
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B
And I want to read the Samuel L. Jackson, Tarantino Pulp Fiction version of Ezekiel 25. So the fake one, can you perform
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A
it for the listening audience?
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B
So here's what the movie quote is. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes. And they shall know that I am the Lord when I shall lay my vengeance upon them. That's just part of it. So this is what he's quoting. You can understand why Pete Hegseth thinks this is great.
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A
Yeah, that's right. Why he's attracted to this. It kind of reflects his theology. Full of wrath and divine sanction to do murderous things.
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B
Okay, here's the longer quote. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity, goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. That's the fake quote from Pulp Fiction that our Christian Secretary of Defense used in his prayer and called other people to pray, believing it's actually a genuine quote from Ezekiel. And the fact that he doesn't know that is disturbing. This is like, for me, this story captures in one succinct little Moment. Both the false piety and the asininity of the Trump administration, that they're trying to be pious and holy using bloodthirsty, wrathful language that they think is coming from the Bible, but actually has come from the pen of Quentin Tarantino. That is the perfect summary of this administration.
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A
Yes. No, that's right. I don't think it's any coincidence that, I mean, it would have been embarrassing and a little weird if he would have quoted some sort of, you know, verse about love or joy or something like that that wasn't in the Bible. But it happens to be this very wrathful thing that a hitman uses in a movie.
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B
Right. And my hunch is they never even questioned whether it was in the Bible because it sounded so much like something they wanted to be in. The Bible
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A
comes from the first book of Samuel L. Jackson.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So, okay, I am both. I wouldn't say outraged, but, you know, rolling my eyes. And I have to admit, I'm a little entertained because it's kind of funny. If it wasn't, you know, a high ranking government official. Now, what happens if they want to put this, you know, in schools along with the 10 cabinets? Then that's good.
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B
Okay, I just looked it up. I'm going to read for you the actual Ezekiel 25:17.
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A
Okay.
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B
Okay. And you can see where there's a parallel. So this is the real quote. I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the Lord when I take vengeance on them. Okay.
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A
It's like the living translation. Just expand it a little bit.
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B
Yeah, so. And he's speaking about the Philistines who sought to destroy Judah. Da, da, da, da da. But like all the other embellishments of it's not there. And even then. We talked about this on the main Holy Post podcast. Pete Hegseth has cited many imprecatory psalms, wrathful psalms, in his prayers against Iran, which is a real misuse of scripture or misunderstanding. We can go back and listen to that if you guys haven't seen it. But the fact that the Bible is a very large book and it has a lot of different genres and messages and context and stories and all that. And if you are looking for compassionate, empathetic messages, you can find them in the Bible. If you are looking for wrathful, angry, bloodthirsty stuff, you can find that in the Bible. So the problem is you need a consistent, informed, hermeneutical framework for properly reading and interpreting the Scriptures. You can't Just go in and cherry pick, whatever. It's not a buffet where you go, oh, I just want all the sugary stuff and I don't want any of the protein. Like, no, there's a way to read these things. But the fact that Hegseth and others just go for the most bloodthirsty, vengeful, wrathful stuff and go, this is what God is calling us to as the man in charge of the most lethal military the world has ever seen is a little creepy and disturbing and in violation of 2000 years of Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. So it's really gross. But you're right, it's entertaining.
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A
It's entertaining when you are representative of the most powerful empire on earth. Usually those imprecatory psalms are uttered by someone that is being oppressed by someone, you know, so it's. There's a certain misfit between the speaker and the context anyway.
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B
But this takes it to another level, though, because it's one thing to read those imprecatory psalms and draw some of the wrathful language and employ them in a prayer. It's another thing to hear a prayer or a quote of scripture from a violent Tarantino movie and go, yeah, I'm going to take that and never even realize that that's not in Scripture, or double check what the reference is in scripture before using it. That's the other part. It's just the level of theological and biblical ignorance while claiming theological and biblical justification for your war. It's just. It's the perfect example of this.
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A
Reveals a little biblical illiteracy as well. You know, one of the few times where I felt genuinely sorry for Trump was when these two guys were interviewing him about scripture and asked him his favorite book of the Bible. He's like, some of them, all of them. You know, it's like, what do you like better? The New Testament of the Old. It's an equal. And you could just tell he's never cracked a Bible in his life. I mean, maybe he has, but he knows nothing about the Bible, right? And he's sitting there just kind of squirming and. Yeah, sometimes when you don't know the
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B
Bible, you know what? No doubt we have had presidents in the past who were biblically ignorant, right. Who didn't know theology, who weren't Christian, whatever. I'm not faulting him for that. It's when you present yourself as. I mean, as Jesus Christ, as he did recently in his AI generated post, right? Like when you present yourself as God's gift to the earth and this soldier of Christian virtue and values. And then you know nothing about Scripture. That's the problem.
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A
And say it's your favorite book, right?
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B
Yeah, it's not. It's not the biblical ignorance, it's the hypocrisy.
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A
Sky, he was a doctor in that depiction.
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B
Yeah, of course.
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A
You know, because all doctors wear flowing robes these days. All right, okay. That's just kind of a weird one. I thought we had to talk about it. It's a weird one. There's a weird one every week, though. This one is weird, kind of sad, kind of alarming. We've talked about this before. There's a new study that came out recently showing that the fertility rate in the US has hit a new historic low. There aren't enough babies. Sky. Of course we're doing our part, man. I know. We both have three, but it fell to. So basically, you know, replacement is like 2.1. Right.
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B
A woman has to have 2.1 children to.
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A
Right.
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B
Keep the population stable.
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A
Yeah. And that 0.1 child is always funny looking, but the rate now is 1.57, which is considerably the lowest in history. So it's an issue. So for just point of comparison, last year there were 710,000 fewer babies born than in like 2026. Or, sorry, 2006. Sorry, like 20 years ago. So, yeah, that's a pretty dramatic decline. And the reason this kind of grabbed my attention is because you see people debating about it online and it's really interesting. It kind of splits into two camps. There's one that are going like, hey, listen, look at how expensive everything is these days. And young couples saying, like, we can't afford to have a kid. We need two incomes. It's not like, oh, we just want more money. So we both work. We need two incomes. Housing has gone through the roof. The average age of a first time homebuyer is now 40, which is crazy. And so they're saying, we can't afford babies. Other people are going, no, no, no, no. It's a priorities thing because, you know, and it's true. I mean, people don't maybe value it. It's not a goal for a lot of folks these days like it was in past generations. I saw someone online talking about, like, my grandma had 11 kids and she was in World War II getting bombed in a tiny house with no running water. Okay, fair. I'd probably split the difference and say there's probably a little bit of both going on here.
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B
And obviously it depends on the particular situation. There's Plenty of people who would desperately children and are facing various reasons why they can't, whether they're economic or fertility, all kinds of stuff.
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A
Or they don't have a spouse and they would love to meet someone.
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B
Yeah, yeah. There's lots of different things and then there's other people.
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A
Whatever.
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B
Okay. This is interesting on so many different levels. One thing that comes to mind is, I don't know if you saw this, but years ago there was this thing that showed before the Iron Curtain fell in Eastern Europe, like birth rates were really low. And then after the Iron Curtain fell, they skyrocketed. And a lot of people look at that and there's a debate whether it's purely economic. With the unleashing of capitalism in Eastern Europe and there's all these new opportunities and all the growth in the economy is there and all these new jobs. Is that what spurred more fertility and people deciding to have children? Or was it more, in a weird sense, spiritual? Where when people don't have hope for the future, they tend not to have as many children or children at all. And so the lack of hope in Eastern Europe, for various reasons, the economic doldrums, the lack of religion, the oppression of freedoms and things like that, just kept people feeling like, what's the point of life? I have no meaning and purpose. Why would I pass that angst onto another generation? We're just not going to have kids. But then it opened up and you have this flourishing of both the economy and the newfound freedoms of Eastern Europe, and people start having more kids. Some people wonder if that's part of what's going on in other parts of the west now, as society becomes less hopeful, more pessimistic, more negative in all the craziness of our politics, then you add on top of it inflation and the cost of living and all the rest of the. And you have this perfect recipe for a declining birth rate. The other thing that comes to mind is a lot of people don't make the connection between birth rates and economic vitality. So, simply put, you cannot have a growing economy without a growing population.
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A
Right? Yeah, right.
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B
And Japan is a great example of this. Japan, for many years has had a declining birth rate. There's a statistic, forget what year it came out that showed when Japan started selling more adult diapers than infant diapers.
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A
It's a bad sign.
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B
It is a bad sign. So as people age and they retire out of the workforce and then they retire off the planet, you need to have new workers coming in to replace them and to pay for that aging group who have, yeah, you get medical.
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A
You have the upside down pyramid where you have fewer people on the bottom to support the people that are retiring.
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B
So you have to have those new young people coming from someplace. And there's two options. You can either make them yourself in birthing them or import them, or you can import them right through immigration. And so Japan's problem was their birth rates were super low and they have no immigration policy. They have very strict immigration policy. Like, you can't just immigrate to Japan and become Japanese. It's just not how their society works. So their economy has been in the doldrums for years and years and years because they don't have enough workers to replace the ones who are retired, retiring. That's also true in a lot of Western Europe, and it's true in the United States. But the reason why our economy has been thriving all these years is because of immigration. Not only do you get workers coming in as immigrants, but then they tend to have more children because they're coming from more traditional societies that value that and on and on. And it's usually second, third, fourth generation immigrant families who are no longer immigrants, obviously, who see the birth rate suddenly decline because they become acclimated, assimilated to Western American culture, and they have fewer kids, which is why then we need more immigrants. So what's fascinating is you have this moment right now in the second Trump administration where for economic and perhaps social and spiritual reasons, people are having fewer kids and you're choking off immigration, which is what has made it possible for people to have fewer kids and keep the economy thriving. So if we don't either start having more children or you open the spigot for immigrants to come in, American economic flourishing will also collapse. And that's the shortest economic. And I've had conversations with economists about this and Wall street people about this and others. And I mean, before Trump was in office, I remember talking to one guy, big wig on Wall street, who was talking about the global economy and what's going on in different sectors around the world. And I asked him, we were speaking at an event together. I asked him backstage afterwards. I said, well, why aren't we seeing some of this stuff in the US and his direct quote to me was, thank God for the immigrants, because if it wasn't for the immigrants, our economy would be dead. And he's by no means a liberal left wing.
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A
Just about the economics.
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B
It's about the economics. And so I'm like, is anyone realizing this on the Right.
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A
No, and I saw one. I forget what scholar it was. But talking of speculating that in the future we may have this bizarre competition where the United States and Europe, because of our declining populations, is actually in competition for immigrants to prop up our aging population, because people don't really understand this. I see people online, they're like, who cares? Fewer. Fewer kids. Fewer people, that's good. The world's overpopulated. The environment's in trouble. But they don't understand you can't do that. And it's a compounding problem because once you have fewer kids, then there are fewer people in the next generation to have babies, unless they had like a ton of babies to reverse it. So it's like exponential, but the other way. So, yeah, it's a real issue, and it hits fast. Like, we're going to be by the mid part of the century looking at major problems.
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B
So, I mean, you got to understand, a lot of our social safety net in this country is essentially a Ponzi scheme. Right. So it's you and I as we work right now, and we get a paycheck and we get our taxes withdrawn from that part of it is Social Security tax. What we're paying into Social Security right now is just turning around and being paid out to the retirees who are receiving Social Security. So you have to have enough workers earning money, and it's going to be
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A
gone in like, what, six or seven years.
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B
Yeah. So the funny thing is all these systems worked really, really well when the baby boomers were in the workforce. Right. The largest generation in American history. They're all working, they're earning money, they're paying into Social Security, they're paying into Medicare, they're paying into Medicaid. It's all working because there's fewer retirees and there's a lot of workers. Well, the baby boomers are now in the retiree thing. They're withdrawing on. They're withdrawing on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and all that. And there's fewer workers to pay to it, so it's not solvent, and it's only going to be worse.
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A
And a lot of people are like, hey, we're going to have to implement austerity measures, means tests. Some of these programs ain't going to happen because guess who votes older people. They're going to continue. They're not stupid. They're going to continue to vote entitlements for themselves, too. And yeah, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm not counting on it being there for us.
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B
And this is a weird argument that some AI advocates are pushing for is, well, we're not going to have enough workers in the future anyway because we're not having enough children. But we still need to have a productive economy. So where's that going to come from?
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A
Well, AI, bring in the robots.
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B
Bring in the robots. They will be the ones that. Now the problem is it might go too far and those of us who are still able bodied workers no longer have jobs because the robots take that over and then you create a whole new set of problems. Right? So it's a very weird moment, but
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A
it's a weird world. But I think you're onto something though about the lack of hope sometimes. Not just the economics. Economics plays a role, but there is a counterfactual you can look at, at very affluent countries in Western Europe that have great social safety nets and all that, right? And there sometimes it's even worse. The birth rate. So not convinced that you just had better programs.
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B
Precisely. Japan's problem is for years the government in Japan is trying to incentivize people to get married and have children. Tons of economic incentivization, all kinds of nothing's worked. So to make the argument that if we just had better welfare, health care, whatever, which France has, that the UK has, that Canada has, that Japan has, that their birth rates are plummeting also.
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A
That's true.
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B
So it's not just. I think economics is a factor. I don't want to say it isn't, but it's not everyone who's tried an economic solution. It hasn't worked.
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A
So it tells me it doesn't work though. Lecturing young people with gloomy sticks and dystopian scenarios. I agree, I will.
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B
This relates. This is a topic I think we might cover at an upcoming Holy Post episode. There was an article recently, I forget where it's from, maybe the Atlantic. And it was asking why or. No, it was a New York Times columnist. Why? A couple years ago we saw tons of college campus protests against Israel for the Gaza war. Why aren't we seeing any college protests against Trump? Why aren't we seeing any protests about ice or. I'm talking on college campuses, right? We're seeing protests, but not like what happened. And one of the theories is don't worry, this is not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a Holy Post plus subscriber. So head over to holypost.com skypod and sign up for just $5 a month. Not only will you get uninterrupted episodes of the Skypod, which means you'll never have to hear this dumb announcement again, but you'll also get access to everything else at Holy Post plus including episodes of Getting Schooled by Caitlin, Chess bonus interviews, live streams, the Holy Post Book Club, exclusive merchandise, and a whole bunch more. And you'll get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that you're supporting our work of creating smart, pro neighbor Christian content. So head over to holypost.com skypod and subscribe.