I Got Rid of My Smartphone... You Should Too!

[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] i'd like to announce my new book how to be happy saint thomas's secret to a good life although just about every marketing firm self-help guru and man on the street has an answer very few if any understand true happiness it doesn't come from power pleasure popularity or possessions so what is happiness and how do we find it in how to be happy i rely on the help of saint thomas aquinas to show what will and won't bring us happiness in this life my hope is that by making the thought of aquinas accessible for today my new book will be a helpful guide to a good life check the link in the description of this video to get your copy today okay g'day g'day everybody welcome to pints with aquinas i do promise that we have some videos on thomas aquinas coming very soon but as you may know i took a month off of the internet throughout august and so yesterday was my first day back and here i am again it's great to have you all here today i want to talk about why i'm switching to a dumb phone dumb phone and how you can too i want to share four possible options for you believe me i've looked into all of them well i think a lot of them and so i want to look at kind of four possible options that kind of make sense and then i want to share with you the one i'm settling on um and then i'd love to take your questions now one thing i think would be really cool is if we gave each other advice in the comments section below this video you wouldn't be here if you weren't in some way aware that technology is impacting you right um so that's why you're here so even if you can't switch to a dumb phone right now or even if you're just not really willing to do that right now i think the fact that you're here says that you see that technology can have a negative impact in people's lives and may be having a negative impact on your life so wouldn't it be cool if we could learn from each other in the comment section below by sharing the kinds of things we want to do to live a more ha i don't know how else to say it except to say more beautiful uh balanced uh life okay so um let me just have a sip of my coffee all right let me say a few things i took august offline absolutely loved it i knew i wanted a phone throughout that month so that if my wife wanted to get a hold of me if my parents needed to get a hold of me they could have but i was like i want to flip phone those are the most annoying things in the world do i have any other options and i looked into those options which i'll be sharing soon and i realized i had one so i bought that phone used it for the month and and i'm gonna be sharing that one with you today and coming back online i'm so glad to be getting rid of this phone like so this is my this is my iphone you know i i opened it up today there's like a gazillion comments on here and i just i can't do it anymore i don't want to do it anymore walking around with a high-powered computer in your pocket that's continually telling you to give it attention is just not a way i want to live my life anymore so i'm getting rid of this bloody thing and what's kind of kind of exciting and kind of scary is i've got a gazillion numbers and people know how to get a hold of me in a gazillion different ways i kind of like that i could just sort of write to those people i'm close with and say here's my new number and then just let people find me a different way i know that sounds harsh i don't mean it too i'm sure i love many of these people all of them but i just i i want to kind of detach in a way that i think's healthy father gregory pine put it well he said this is a strange thing because through it i can make demands upon you and through it you can make demands upon me we all very much like the first thing but not the second thing but there are people in our lives who we need to be giving attention to and even good books and poetry and coffee and cigars and whiskey with friends on the back porch that we ought to be engaging with but we don't want to have to do it and be disrupted every five seconds all right so can't wait to get rid of this bloody thing all right let me let me share with you some options all right these are the four options i think you could do um if you want to get a dumb phone all right for me it's about what level of inconvenience am i willing to accept because this phone this this this iphone is so convenient so i'm it's so what we're not doing is how do i live a more convenient life that's if that's what you want keep your iphone but if you want a more balanced peaceful slow you know regulated life if you find that the iphone is making you anxious or whatever it is the android then again you're not looking for a more convenient life because it's not convenient to get rid of your smartphone it's a pain in the butt honestly throughout august i had my dumb phone and i told you yesterday i had to get a taxi who gets a taxi i was at a hotel in savannah i had to get to the airport i just figured there would be a taxi out the front you know how usually there's taxis out the front of hotels nope i had to call them the guy almost looked at me strange i'm sorry a what a taxi you remember them i called them we'll be there in 20 minutes i'm like 20 minutes and then i got to put my credit card in you know type my credit card in it's just it's different it's a pain not having my delta app when i travel that's a pain all right but here's the question what level of inconvenience am i willing to accept all right so here are the four options and i'm going to end on the final one here's the first the first thing you could do is lock down your smartphone you can pretty much make your smartphone a dumb phone and the way you can do that is by going to settings and in settings blocking the app store and you can set a password in there so that you have to put in the password to get your app store back now what i've done up until recently is i've given my phone to my wife i'm like can you put this password in that i don't know i'll block the app store okay now i have an iphone without an app store now i look at my phone and say what apps do i want to get rid of and i delete everything that can access the internet this is way harder than it sounds unfortunately but you you can pretty much do something like that make your smartphone a dumb phone although i think it always seems like there's a way around it so you can make it like super inconvenient to get to the internet but there's i think there's sometimes a way around it but that's one thing you could do turn off all the notifications on your phone delete all the apps that access the internet except the apps that you want and maybe you want to keep audible and maybe you want to keep maps and maybe you want to keep something else but delete everything else all right i think that's like at the very least if you're concerned about this this is something that you should be able to do all right now if you're cooler than that yeah that's me shaming you if you're cooler than that here are three options that i want to share with you i'm going to share with you them in order and and you've probably heard of them right the first is the light phone uh it is definitely the coolest looking phone check this out so so this seems to me to be the coolest of the quote unquote dumb phones right it's the size of a credit card um it just looks super hipster and cool like it just looks cool it's the coolest looking dumb phone i think that there is here's why it didn't work for me i got it a couple of years ago got it in the mail was super excited about it now i don't know what updates they've made to this phone since then so i can't speak to that but when i got it it had texting it had you know phone it was cool because you can do group text which is something that some dumb phones don't do right the old flip phones but what i found really infuriating about it is texting was so difficult like it looks easy they but i found it personally really hard it might be just because i have fat australian thumbs um so i just found it too difficult because people today text in paragraphs like maybe 20 years ago people texted you and it was okay to say one word in response but now it's kind of expected that you respond with a sentence or something and that's just really hard to do on this the other thing was at least when i got it it didn't have maps now maybe they've changed that it looks like they have but i was for me i'm like the i need maps maps is not is not something i'm willing to give up i i need to have maps i don't want to have a gps in my car that i have to plug into my computer to update every year you know a gps from walmart or something so for me this didn't work now for you it might thelightphone.com you check that out here's another option that you could you could check out okay and that is the gab phone the gab phone so the gab phone is a phone that has been created by i think some beautiful family loving mormons i tell you what the mormons are the best when it comes to providing beautiful things for families just unreal so it looks like a kid's phone and it's designed for kids right it's the kind of phone that you would give to your kid when they've never had a phone before and you don't give them a smartphone because you're not an idiot and so you give them this no internet no social media no games no worries what's cool about the gab phone is it has music i so if you know you're like okay i need to have music music is a non-negotiable for me well then you could check that out let's see so it looks good um but it doesn't have maps and i needed maps so here's here's the phone that i settled on uh this one here it's called the wise phone by teclas a phone pure and simple whoop tired of this yes meet the alternative all right so my my computer's not loading quick enough there but it's called um the wise phone and that's what i've settled on and i actually really like it i've got it here it obviously looks like a smartphone but it's it's like it's someone it's like somebody who's very attractive but dumb that's not fair uh but uh is true um it looks like a smartphone but it's not it has a clock calculator google maps which was just awesome camera and that's important for me because i send business receipts to my accountant by photograph i take a photo text it to him phone group text the other thing that's cool about texting is it has voice to text that's awesome too um yeah so i i really like that the other thing that's cool about google maps when i heard that they had google maps i was afraid that maybe i could see images or click through to websites but you can't actually do that um which is really really cool um you click maps and you don't even see images you don't see the website you don't see anything you know sometimes it'll show you pictures of the coffee shop that you want to go to and things like that so this is the option that i'm settled on now is it just as good as the iphone definitely not i mean it's like a it uses a motorola it's i guess based on android but it's something they've developed so that you and i can live a more simple life so again the question isn't how do i live a more convenient life it's how do i live a more peaceful life and if peaceful is what you're going for then i think you and i should be willing to put up with the inconveniences that a phone like this is is going to present us and i'm okay with that so so what i actually reached out to the guys uh yesterday um they're not paying me to advertise them by the way just in case anyone's curious uh i've never had a conversation with them before i just reached out to them yesterday and i said hey i have like a youtube channel and i want to tell people about your phone would you want to give them any kind of discount and they said yes so i don't know if you want it i don't get a kickback or anything like that but there's a link in the top of the description below and if you type in you it'll say it says it right there type in frad capital letters and you'll get 40 off the phone it was about 300 and something dollars so it's not cheap you know but it's not as expensive as an iphone and i'm really really happy that i made this transition um yeah there's much more to say but but i i guess i'll leave it at that and see if you guys have certain questions here in the live stream chat if you have other suggestions you want to offer feel free and again if you're watching this after the live stream below please let us know something that you've done to live a more peaceful life by limiting technology in a helpful way all right i'm going to sip on my espresso while while the comments might come in okay steven e says i've been wanting to get the wise phone for a while but my phone i have is free i know bad excuse my one thought is the maps how good is the maps application is it just a port of google maps so i don't know what port means cause i'm not techy or intelligent but um yeah it's great it works really well i can type in say franciscan university of steubenville or i can type in the address and it works just like google maps does um yeah so to me essentially uh the other thing that's a bit annoying about this maps is if you type in coffee shop the first thing that might show up is like a coffee shop in like africa or vermont so you kind of have to say like uh the exact coffee shop or coffee steubenville and then it'll pull up you know a coffee shop in steubenville hey yep i am recording sorry that's all right good to see you feel free to have a coffee just press the button you click up on the espresso thing put it in click down all right that's my wife everybody feel free to yell out hello they can't see you hello all right so yep there's a hand terrific i'll be done love in about 20 minutes or so all right all right i love you i love you bye bye uh anyway so i like i like the google google maps all right and i think it does a really good job um all right let's see here elliott says will you be fully offline as in no twitter or youtube or are you going to just relegate those apps to only yeah that's a great that's a really good question so actually about three years ago i got off twitter facebook and instagram and if you've been following me for a while you know that um i heard a excellent talk by matt walsh actually it was a very old podcast of his on the daily wire we talked about how social media is like the worst and it's awful and get off it and i decided to stay on it because i wanted to promote you know pints of aquinas episodes and things like that but i just hired somebody to run my social media now i know that if i took over my social media today if i put instagram on my iphone and twitter and i was really connected and showed you guys the ins and outs of my life and what i'm doing right now and i would my social media are doing way better than it's doing right now but it was i don't care like i care more about living a peaceful life than living in the social media landscape and so about three years ago i haven't been on social media personally since then so you might say like this is like one more step in the direction away from the big black hole that is uh modern technology so i do use youtube obviously or else you wouldn't be seeing this and so yeah i'll only use youtube on my computers here's the other thing that's even more radical um i've got rid of my laptop so basically at the end of the night when i'm done here in my studios here in steubenville i take my wise phone home and i don't have access to technology anymore technology in the sense of computers right i don't have any access to computers so i i sometimes i think i wonder if if someone's emailing me but that's cool i don't want to check your email while i'm on the toilet and you probably don't want to think of that image and i'm sorry that i gave it to you but so getting up in the morning coming to work then checking my emails you know checking youtube that's cool i love having that distance from work it's really really helped so i think that probably answers your question let's see here uh esteban hey matt going to have my coffee now cheers bud cool thank you very much pro justice matt pays people to upload and keep his account up to date especially instagram yeah i do that is what i do let's see what else man there's so many of y'all commenting thank you kindly let's see simon says i'm hesitant about some useful things i have that only work with a smartphone for example remote start for our car a smart temp controller for my smoker yeah again like i i'm sorry if i sound like a broken record but the question is what level of inconvenience am i willing to embrace in order to live a more peaceful life and maybe you're not willing to have a car that you have to put a key into and turn it on maybe you're not willing to have to set the temperature control of your smoker manually and if you're not willing to do that then okay like keep your phone and maybe that's great for you i'm not saying everybody has to get off phones here i'm just saying me personally i feel like i have to and i think there are many other people like that um louisa hey she says if you're not ready to give up a smartphone but you want to have more phone free interactions institute a phone jail at home or with friends where the phones go away when you're interacting okay i agree in theory that this is a good idea in practice i think your phone is smarter than you are and that unless you have a saint level of self-control you will not be able to maintain that for long i'm just getting to the point where i just i don't think people have the levels of self-control that they like to think that they have maybe this maybe maybe i shouldn't be saying that maybe this maybe i don't and i shouldn't push my stuff on you but there's always an excuse to look at your phone there's always an excuse to do something like my wife and i will be sitting together and she'll pick up her phone and i'll be like what are you what are you doing and you're like well i'm just and she'll say something that's like yeah legit but like i want to sit i want to sit with you i want to be bored with you i i want to sit and worry about what to think about i want to ask you a question like you know who won the super bowl in 1997 and not have you google it not that i'd be interested in that fact but like i want to talk i don't want a phone getting in the way and so i agree that you can set phone jails and maybe you're great at that i'm not and i wouldn't be and i don't think most people are because there's always oh yeah it's there but i need to just go downstairs and get it so i can send that quick email that i just thought about but it's like you don't have a smartphone you can't even do it so it just sort of takes away that that level of anxiety i think you know julio says what could be some steps some of us could take to dumb down our phones if some of us need certain things from it for school and can't make the switch to a dumb phone yeah so i'm not sure if you saw the beginning of the episode but i talked about how you can block the app store at least on iphones perhaps you can do something similar on android i'm not entirely sure once you black that block that app store you can then block other things on the phone you know that that's an option but it's gonna be hard i think okay biggest thing that holds me back is not having instant message what's up app yeah i totally get it right like people have different ways of communicating so for me one of the ways that i communicated prior to august when i took the month off the internet was marco polo like marco polo was huge for me i used it all the time to communicate with people i it's gonna be hard but i think i need to get away from that which is hard because my patrons one of the levels is they get access to this like marco polo group so i'm gonna have to do something different for them i'm gonna do something like maybe like a live zoom chat once a month or something where we all get on and talk with each other and have a beer i have to change that but like yeah like i mean i get it like for you it's what's that for me it was marco polo um the question is what level of inconvenience are you willing to accept in order to live a more peaceful life and if you're not willing to accept the inconvenience of not having whatsapp then you're not willing to accept that and that's totally understandable like no shame people have different ways of communicating different sort of emotional boundaries where they're getting too you know stressed out or whatever and maybe you're doing fine so that's great um yeah again i don't want to come off as self-righteous like i have i have less self-control than y'all do i promise and which is my why i have to do this so this isn't like look how great i am this is like look how sucky i am that i can't even deal with an iphone but that's too that's no i don't i don't believe that i think if i'm honest i think we're all sucky yeah like i think you're suckier than you think and i i kind yeah yeah i'm gonna go back on what i just said there see i tried to seem humble and as i said it i'm like no i think you're just as bad as i am so i think we gotta do something serious but that said i understand people have different circumstances in life that may not enable them to do that right now so i get that i think that's that's that's a true statement um okay there's he cool dumb ox just says i wish i could put ibravery on the on the wise phone right cool so again there's a link in the description below to the wise phone check it out if you want to buy it they'll give you 40 off if you've used frad uh in the promo code section i got it i'm using it it's the thing i've decided to use right um okay so to to every comment like this i'm going to say the same thing what level of inconvenience are you willing to accept in order to live a more peaceful life so maybe you get the wise phone and then you've got to lug around a bravery in your backpack or maybe you have to start wearing a backpack to carry around a book that you wouldn't have had to carry around if you like you're going to ha things are going to get more complicated before they get better things are going to be more annoying before you feel at rest and let me warn you about this as well we take our need for immediate gratification that the phone has talked us into into the project of living a more peaceful life so we think okay i'm just going to get the wise phone and i'm going to have this immediate sense of peace but that's exactly the thing that the phone has trained us into that isn't acceptable like we shouldn't have that disposition that way of thinking it's going to be annoying it's going to be annoying i uh here's one story i went to savannah keep talking about my only trip last month to savannah i went with my daughter avila i'm so used to having the delta app that bings and tells you boarding now or it has boarding now prominently on the on the app that i actually showed up to my gate when my flight left not when it was boarding and so i missed my flight guys i travel i i don't travel much anymore but i used to travel quite a great deal for the last 10 years i've been traveling nine days a month i've never missed a flight because i've been there late so the next flight to savannah was full i was in the airport for seven hours with my daughter with my wise phone which doesn't access the internet obviously it was tough i didn't enjoy that at all i wasn't sitting around being like i'm just so at peace with myself right now no i really would have liked the internet at that point what level of inconvenience am i willing to accept in order to ultimately if not right away live a more peaceful life i'm going to keep saying that until you stop listening to me um let's see here andrew says gave up phone twice in life on military deployments and it was liberating yeah this is the experience people have let's see okay uh jessica lopez says what about taking photos i take so many pictures of my babies with a smartphone okay that's again like [Laughter] you that's a beautiful thing to do and exactly i mean you're in a predicament here what are you gonna do because this has a phone this does have a camera on it um and it's in beta right now and so i guess they're kind of getting to the point where they're going to have libraries that work so you can look into that for yourself but yeah like what's your option man like if you i i took my son to the store the other day because he wanted a camera and i bought him a camera that's it so yeah i mean that's like a level of inconvenience that you may not be willing to accept you know like would you want to go buy a good quality camera and start taking photos of your kids and have those photos uploaded to your computer that's the inconvenience we're talking about here and it's tough but it might be necessary again it's going to be way more annoying first before it gets better i know a man says matt with a phone that has issues looking at porn he would be wise to ditch the smartphone 110 this is a great way to not look at porn get rid of your phone get a get a wise phone that cannot access the internet or look at pictures online in any shape or form do it just do it do it right now click the link in the description below and buy a wise phone or any one of those other phones i was talking to you about i don't care what phone you get but just get a dumb phone let's do it neil says matt praise be jesus christ if i were to switch to the dumb phone how would i listen to pints honestly it would be better for you never to listen to this podcast again and just read good books i know i like i've said it before i see how ironic it is that i'm telling you to like get off the internet and that's how you listen to me but your life would be better if you didn't listen to me or anybody else and instead read beautiful books you know be better now if you're gonna stick around on the internet i think my podcast is worth listening to so stick around but maybe stop listening to pints with aquinas like honestly there's so many people who are so much obviously smarter and more articulate than me and when it comes to the spiritual life and thomas aquinas and philosophy and theology that you could read like i had the ability to do that when i was offline in august it was so easy to read a ton because i wasn't being constantly distracted so maybe stop listening to pints i get that that doesn't help me but i do think your life would be better if you got off the internet entirely if you're not going to get off it keep listening here let's see berean says light phone now has directions with no google surveillance ah that's awesome as a bonus plus a company that is still developing and actually listens to customers and cares okay awesome go check out light phone okay so my experience with light phone is from like two years ago so it's sounds like their phone is doing it's a lot more advanced than it was in the past so go check that out as well thank you for sharing that for me though the other thing that was difficult was the texting like it was so difficult to text maybe they've changed that as well but it was like the size of a credit card and there's no voice to text and like trying with my fat thumbs to write a text when people are like hey what's going on today are you going down to that thing tonight and i didn't see you this thing what have you been up to lately like i can't text you that so but i gave my light phone to a friend who's using it and he said that what he did was um he people just realized that he wasn't going to text them back and they stopped texting him so there's that [Music] all right man this is this has been lovely thank you for for being here okay dan the man says my biggest problem is turning to the black rectangle of infinite possibility because i'm bored and not turning to god dan you're so beautiful that's so great man that's good for you for recognizing that and good for you for accusing yourself it's so tempting to accuse like how many times have you heard people say people are so addicted to their ferns today with my bad american accent but it's better to be like i'm addicted to my phone don't say people say you you suck uh so acknowledge your own suckiness and do something about that i think that's like a less articulate pep talk dumbed-down version of jordan peterson uh mumbai daddy says smack god bless would you be open to a pints newsletter or maybe there is one dude that would be the shiznitz sorry i said cheersnets that would be cool would you guys like that if we did like an actual newsletter that i mailed to your house holy dude you just blew me away i think i'm gonna do that cheers again this looks like beer it's water i promise oh man this is dude i'm gonna i'm gonna look into that i'm just i'm gonna make my assistant's life way harder because of that question thank you for that uh what is a good book to start learning about aquinas if you go to pints with aquinas.com and in the search bar type in book or aquinas i did a whole podcast where i shared like 10 books you should read about aquinas one book would be the dumb ox by gk chesterton uh litzkrieg who i know is a patron thank you very much for being a patron i am in grad school for international relations foreign policy do you have any recommendations for catholic writing authors on the subject and how to approach the field from that faith man no i don't sorry if somebody else does feel free to let him know in the live chat now people like the newsletter all right all right all right all right paul have you watched any of the minimalist stuff by the way paul thank you for being a patron uh it means a ton to me have i watched the minimalist stuff or your thoughts on that they help me get that's cool i don't no i don't watch the minimalist things i don't know what that is i mean i've heard of minimalism i think it can be a very good thing i'm skeptical of people who get rid of their house for like a small house like how do i entertain how do i have people over to my house when there's like two seats and a table the size of a iron board ironing board you know what i mean but yeah i think there's definitely wisdom in there that's kind of what i'm doing i guess oh my gosh paragraphs with aquinas shut your face what a great idea paul says my wife and i both worked in corporate with only flip phones it helped her separate work from home her rule was only call or email me when i'm at work because i have no smartphone you that's beautiful good for you um [Music] ruth says i've never been on instagram or twitter no thanks haven't been on facebook since last may my favorite is hello and youtube since hallow's come up a few times let me tell you about them hello is an excellent prayer and meditation app so if you're going to keep your phone android or smartphone download the halo app um i actually had an interview with the founder his name's alex jones that was super funny everyone thought i was interviewing the alex jones but no i was interviewing the founder of the hallow app and he was into all sorts of new age stuff back in the day and he started uh listening he downloaded an app to help him meditate but it was very buddhist in nature and he thought we need to do something like this for catholics that's a hundred percent catholic and it's excellent hello h-a-l-l-o-w if you go to hallow.com sign up there you can get access to the entire app you can also download it for free but there's a lot of things that you have to pay to get access excuse me pal you know minimal fee which i used to but i don't have a phone anymore man i have to cancel that subscription um you'll get access to it's really good and in fact the thing he told me about this sort of mindfulness buddhist meditation app i downloaded after our conversation and i'm not being hyperbolic his app the hello app is actually better than this extraordinarily popular buddhist meditation app like it really is they've put a ton of money into this thing so if you're looking for a good app and you're not willing to get rid of your phone h-a-l-l-o-w hello.com mattfraddhello.com mattfrat there's a link in the description below alright alright alright alright okay this fellow says hello matt i totally agree with the idea of getting rid of my smartphone the only question that i have is on getting rid of my smartphone but keeping a laptop and a kindle am i being consistent honestly i think incremental steps are okay and good and you know one of the best pieces of advice i've ever heard jordan peterson say is the following what is something i could do let me no let me say again what is something i can do that i will do that would make my life better sometimes we let the great be the enemy of the good and so we think it's either all or nothing because so like what could i do to live a more well there's lots of bloody things you could do but will you do them no of course you won't okay so what's something you can do that you actually will do so that's a right so for me getting a flip phone is something i could do but i wouldn't last because texting's impossible and they're just so annoying but i could get this wise phone from tech plus and use that i could do that yeah cool and i would do that yeah so for you you know if you want to get rid of your smartphone and then use your computer and laptop kindle i think anything you can do to remove yourself from the matrix even incrementally is a beautiful thing and and you should do it stephen says besides reading what do you do for fun now that you've completely switched to the white phone i hunt and fish you are so cool dude i wish i hunted and fished um [Music] what do i do for fun i'm pretty boring i i like to read and i like to have good conversations with people and that is usually facilitated by a cigar on my front porch so i do that for fun yeah i watch the odd movie with my wife i don't know i'm pretty i'm really boring actually um i would love to get into hunting and i really want to go ice fishing really really really really want to go ice fishing i've never ice fished i love the idea because when i sit in a closet and drink vodka i have a problem but if i do that while ice fishing i'm an athlete it's essentially the same thing and i like that not that i sit in the closet and drink vodka nor am i advocating that you should bill murray baby steps matt would have a great voice for audio books well thank you in fact i'm currently reading my latest book on happiness by tom you know it's called how to be happy so on amazon i would love for you guys all to go buy a copy or just go become a patron patreon.com fred 10 bucks or more a month i'll send you a free copy of that um but i am reading the audio book for that and that'll be out in the near future please god oh andrew says come up to michigan this winter we'll hook you up i will absolutely do that andrew reach out to me and i will come up and spend a night i would be honored thank you for for the offer yeah no ice fishing in australia yes i was born in australia somebody asks where was i born in australia sydney and i grew up in south australia okay so for those who who are coming into the conversation late i would recommend going back and listening to the beginning of this show because it was a lot more structured and i dealt with questions like maps and phones and things like this so nikolai says what is the solution for gps i find the major impediment of getting right so the solution is the wise phone which i have by teclas has google maps but it doesn't access the internet and it shows no images at all so that's how i get around it so if you click that link in the description below you can check out the wise phone by tech teclas you get 40 off if you type in frad um if you're interested in getting it benjamin handelman good to see you ben he says there's also a wonderful sibling horror channel yeah my sister and i write short supernatural suspense stories and then we pay somebody to narrate them the uh the podcast is called sibling horror you can listen to that if you're interested in horror supernatural stuff or you can buy the book it's on amazon as well i'm kind of proud of it you know i mean we're certainly not great authors or anything like that but it's fun to it's that's something i like to do as well i should say like writing little things jessica virgin says hi matt what advice would you give for college kids a lot of us are still studying online and sometimes need to download apps from the app store for certain subjects tell you to tell your make it rather than you have to feel awkward because you have a dumb phone make the professor feel awkward by saying i don't have a i don't have a smartphone so i can you uh how do i get access to this let them come up with a solution i i was in the uh i was in ups the other day and i needed to send a package and i had to print off a label and i went to ups and i said do you have a computer so i can print off this label and they went no but you can email it to us and i'm like oh great now i'm going to drive back to my office and send a bloody email because i have a phone that can send emails again what level of inconvenience are you willing to accept in order to live a more peaceful life that was irritating that was inconvenient but i am living a much more peaceful life by not having email at my fingertips you know and having people expect me to get back to them immediately so you know yeah there's awkward things but there's usually ways around them jessica version side note please bring sister miriam hydeland back on the show i love that woman she's my spiritual mother i'll ask her to come back on yeah ava says how do you feel about perth if you've ever been there thinking of visiting there one day i hear beautiful things about perth i've never been perth is sort of all the way over on the west uh side of the country so i'd like to go there one day but i've never been i've heard great things though i hear it's similar in climate to san diego yeah joshua says i think the only thing i would miss would be audio books and podcasts on the go oh 100 i'm with you um but i i made this point yesterday how many audio books and podcasts would you listen to if you had to sit down to listen to them and i don't mean sit down in a car i mean sit down in your house and listen to him because when i had august off of the internet i allowed myself as part of the rules i gave myself i allowed myself the ability to watch tv and i have a i have a smart tv in my office and so i could have sat down and watched say a ben shapiro show and i i didn't do that i had never watched um a podcast while i was on my hiatus because i don't want to sit down for an hour and listen to ben shapiro i think he's got good things to say right and i think other podcasters have great things to say too but um it struck me that might be a question to ask yourself joshua like what podcast am i willing to listen to if i had to sit down and listen to them and if there's not one of them then maybe they're not worth listening to it all so yeah for me i got a record player in my house and it's a record player that has bluetooth and so i've got these lovely jazz i like jazz i know people hate jazz but i like soft soothing jazz and i'll play that and i'll bring the speaker into the kitchen while i wash up the dishes and things like that and it's kind of nice and when i'm driving i have nothing to listen to and i'm over it now in the beginning it was actually really hard and if i had okay so if i had to go on a drive let's say like a three hour road trip on my own what would i do i would probably get um augustine institute has these excellent audio books um they're kind of dramatized audio dramas well that's redundant audio dramas on things like people like st patrick saint francis and they're really really well done uh i would buy that and i'd just plan ahead or i'd go to walmart and i'd buy like a couple of metallica albums like for four bucks each in the cd aisle and i would that's what i would do so again that's inconvenient but i'm willing to embrace that level of inconvenience in order to live a more peaceful life owen says i like matt walsh ben is okay on some things i got a friend of mine uh who will go remain nameless i said to him i haven't listened to ben shapiro lately he's like why listen to matt walsh she's like you should come over here it's way worse over here so i think what he means is matt is a tends to be a lot more negative uh jimmy akins podcast yeah that's right jimmy's incredible i would sit down and listen to jimmy's podcast a hundred percent andrew says can you do an episode on the dumb music player you have vinyl i could i'd have to take my my uh camera in and do that but sure i guess i could do that hi matt can you host a pilgrimage for young adults just a random thought i could but i don't ever want to wear a mask again and so i don't even want to get on a plane again if that means wearing a mask and so no but i'll do a pilgrimage here in steubenville with you we can walk around to different run-down shops and hang out i don't know i was actually thinking about maybe doing a doing an actual um conference an in-person conference somewhere maybe next year we'll see emily you're so kind she says i'm sitting down listening to you right now you're probably the only person i would sit down and listen to because you give very useful advice and encourage us all to be better people thanks so much that's so kind of you i i hope that's true thank you jennifer says i never realized i loved that kind of jazz too until i started turning on ambience videos yes i love it do yourself a favor type in soothing jazz into youtube and click one of those eight hour ones they usually have this beautiful image of like a coffee shop type in soothing jazz coffee shop and have a good time man i i i don't care if that's wrong i love it louder with crowder is more fun than daily wire less doom and gloom okay cool um bible year with father mike schmitz yeah what a dude love him okay i think uh we might be coming to the end here but thanks for being here friends if if more questions come in i'm happy to answer them but you guys i don't know how long we want this to be matt what is your opinion on the status of contemporary sacred art uh i haven't really i don't know what the status is on contemporary sacred art i mean certainly we all realize nobody denies that a lot of contemporary religious art is just horse crap um but i'm sure there's some that's absolutely beautiful i haven't really looked into it peter craft says blue bear wrote a book on heaven interview him i just interviewed him last month so you should go check that out what are some of your favorite jazz albums i like um some of miles davis stuff some some of it's just nuts i actually really like lo-fi hip-hop um a lot it's just so beautiful i'm gonna try and see if i can get a vinyl of is it um you know that chilled cow i think they have a different name for their thing now anyway all right uh let's see i think we'll do one more question here and then i'll wrap up and share a few things that are going on do you ever feel like having a dumb phone causes more frustration because you can't do simple things yes it does it causes frustration but it's it's a frustration like a cloud that passes and not like a sheet of clouds through which i cannot see the sky was that a bit too poetic did i try too hard it's so yeah there are frustrations having a dumb phone but there is a much deeper level of anxiety through having all the conveniences in my thing in my at my fingertips so i'm willing to embrace certain inconveniences and and not have a smartphone so that's that's that's what i'm doing hey i suck and there's a there's a chance that in three months i will repent and get an iphone again but i suck so that's possible and i will be honest with you if i do that i will make an announcement if i go back but i hope i don't oh look at these beautiful people jessica says deleting apps off my phone right now thanks for this oh i'm so glad somebody asked this matt are you still planning to come to africa okay so a couple of years ago i went to uganda spoke a bunch taught apologetics to catholic leaders there i was supposed to go this year to kenya zimbabwe and uganda but because of covert i couldn't so what i did was i bought hundreds of books and shipped them to them with a very top-rate carrier so the books wouldn't get stolen and then just this morning actually i right before this livestream i recorded a couple of talks that will be being played to my friends in uganda and then i'm going to be doing a live kind of q a with them so i would love to go back to africa i'm actually planning on going to hunt in zimbabwe next year i don't really hunt but this is going to be the first time i do it with a friend because i'll be there anyway please god to be to be teaching apologetics and things like that so yeah thanks for asking oh look at this guy he says how to be happy is a fantastic book thank you so much do me a favor guys if you'd like my new book how to be happy please go and give it a five star review on amazon that really helps me and i think it's a good book as well um it's more kind of personal than my other books i shared a lot more kind of intimately than than other times but it's kind of like yeah i don't know i it was it was good how to be happy is the book you can get on amazon type in frat or how to be happy and i really appreciate it or just become a patron and i'll send you a book for free um all right bless you my friends um again uh why is i got a wise phone by teclas they're not paying me to advertise them but i did reach out to them yesterday and say hey i'm going to talk about you tomorrow do you want to give a discount to people should they want to buy a phone so they said sure we'll give them 40 off and that's pretty significant i think i mean it's a three hundred and something dollar phone so forty bucks off is is is good so there's a link in the description below check out the wise phone by teclas and if you type in fred in the promo code section we'll get 40 bucks off you know what's the worst thing that happens i think the worst thing that happens is you waste 300 bucks which is not a good thing and you get a phone that you hope to use and then you realize you can't really use it much but you i mean because it's a dumb phone it you it's the same price as a flip phone monthly so it's a lot cheaper so even if you just had even if in the beginning you used the wise phone on weekends with a different number and you just gave that number to a few friends and you gradually weaned yourself off the smartphone that's another option as well bless you my friends god bless you if you are not yet subscribed please subscribe to this youtube channel and click the thumbs up button we really appreciate it it really helps obviously google is not interested in promoting many of the videos that i put out because they are faithful to the teachings of the catholic church which google has no interest in promoting so you help me out when you share these videos on facebook and when you like them and when you subscribe to them thanks a lot god bless you [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 51,861

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: YiU57VPGALM

Length: 55min 35sec (3335 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021