I quit the Internet for 30 days ... Here's what happened!

welcome to pints with aquinas um it's been a while since i've done one of these so uh g'day it's good to be here i hope everything is sounding good and looking good um welcome to everybody in the live stream great to have you i have had a month off of the internet actually yeah 30 31 32 days and uh i'm back for the first time feeling lots of different things so i thought i would come on here since i kind of shared that this is what would be happening and sort of share the journey with you and take some questions from y'all and yeah just kind of talk about what it was like um i think this is something that's you know becoming more and more obvious you know people are getting addicted to kind of technology and they're seeing its negative effects the very fact that iphone has a way for you to monitor how much you know screen time you had that week like why why would why would your iphone be interested in having you spend less time on it well it seems only because this is kind of entering into the kind of public consciousness so this is something i think we can all learn from uh i've said it before i'm very blessed uh that um you know we the that i can take a month off the internet had to work my butt off in july uh but then of course i had my assistant and i had a marketing team who were publishing things i had my sister actually was running my social media for the last two months thanks a lot emma and uh yeah so that's a blessing so maybe you can maybe you can't take a month off the internet but i still think um this will be helpful because you might be able to take a weekend off for a day off or something like that um and that'll be that'll be good but it's it's it's really bloody good to be back i have to say that um it's a it's a mixture of i'm excited to hit the ground running and then also kind of like some uh some anxiety a little bit honestly just i turned this phone on today check this out uh i gave this away to my friend joseph palmer here in steubenville i i just i hate it so much just having to hold it and uh it alright gonna turn it off now it arrived in my inbox not my inbox oh my gosh it arrived in my mailbox and uh could you say it again please no i'm not gonna say it again just go away and uh so this came i just turned this on this morning and it exploded with a bazillion beings from people who probably didn't know i was taking the month off the internet i haven't even gone through it the idea of doing that is is pretty nuts so let me just kind of share a little bit about what it was like um and then i'll take some q a so um yeah it's like the 31st of august or july or 30th of july whatever i gave my phone away you saw the last live stream that i did i shot down my computer and that was it and that day i was speaking at an apologetics conference here at uh the university of franciscan university of steubenville i was speaking at a big apologetics conference which is why by the way i was able to get trent horn and mary healey and andrew swafford all in on the same day to then drip them out over the course of the month um so yeah that was that was really cool i went we went to franciscan to give a talk and here's the first thing that happened to me okay i was walking up uh well i parked and there's that lovely sort of entrance area at franciscan and it's got these gorgeous flowers okay now it might sound kind of cheesy or stereotypical but i saw these flowers and i thought they were absolutely gorgeous right they were just bright and beautiful and i thought to myself i should stand here and look at them and then i thought well don't do that that's kind of weird it's a and i shouldn't think that it's sad i think that but i did think that maybe you'd think that too if you've got people walking around you want to take a close-up look at these flowers and the bees buzzing around them and there was a few butterflies but then i thought to myself the only reason these flowers are here the only reason they have been planted here not the only reason flowers exist right but the only reason they were planted here was so that you and i could enjoy them by looking and smelling them like looking at them and smelling them that's their only purpose as far as the people who planted them were concerned so i thought how strange that i should feel a bit weird about doing something with these flowers which is the whole reason that there in the first place and so i did i just kind of stopped and smelt them and looked at them and was just fascinated by their beauty and gave praise to god for them and and i have to say like there was this moment where i looked up feeling a bit weird and i looked around at everybody else looking at their screens i'm like okay so it's beginning here we go um so a few things that i did over the course oh by the way before we go any further my youtube algorithm has taken a massive kick to the butt because i haven't been on posting and we're super down in like our usual subscription numbers so if you haven't subscribed to pints with aquinas would you click subscribe and then that bell button and that way google will be forced to evangelize you through the amazing guests that i have planned for the future that would be awesome thank you so much give us a thumbs up all that stuff really helps um yeah so here's a few of the things that i did in august first of all i bought a kind of cheap record player because i wasn't going to have my phone so i was borrowed some records from different friends of mine i bought some cheap ones um i read the lord of the rings completed it in august and it was magnificent i want to talk a bit about that i even memorized poetry my wife was like shocked at how easily i could do it because i don't actually do that often and i'm not terribly good at memorizing things so my day would consist of like waking up making coffee sitting in my chair putting on a record and reading and so i would read the lord of the rings or i'd read some work on thomas aquinas or apologetics i would read poetry and that was beautiful and then i would hang out with friends we'd play volleyball a few friends of mine here rob pretzel thanks rob and others we just got to hang out together it was absolutely lovely um it was cool to be more interested in what people in my community thought of me than what y'all thought of me no offense or only unless you're in my community because being on youtube you get a gazillion people telling you exactly what they think about you and what you just said and how you got that slightly incorrect and why you shouldn't be so much like this you know and then also praises right telling you how great you are on things like this but it's kind of a bit unbalanced i think it's a little unnatural so to be kind of more concerned with the people in my area was really really cool i really love that i also got a dumb phone for the month and i think i'm going to devote a whole episode to that um because i have made the decision wow i just made it as i said those words i've made the decision to only use a dumb phone and to get rid of this this smartphone here so you know there's a bazillion contacts in here there's a bazillion text messages that i've gotten over the course of this month um yeah i'm not gonna i'm not gonna continue with this i can't i just can't do it it's it's it's it's so ridiculous and unnatural to walk around with a high-powered computer in your pocket it just does awful things to your head i'm convinced of it so i'm getting rid of this uh it's gonna be wow there you go i didn't know i was gonna do that and i'm gonna i'm gonna get i'm gonna keep my dumb phone and i'll probably devote a whole episode to the dumb phone i'm choosing because there's a bunch of different options out there there's like a light phone there's a wise phone you know there's a gab phone these different phones for the modern age so they're not like a flip phone but i think i'm gonna go with that so i'll devote a whole other episode to that anyway um yeah let me just let me just share a couple of the things that i kind of wanted to share with you especially from the lord of the rings let me say this if you haven't read the lord of the rings i want you to do this i want you to take whatever book it is you're reading right now and set it on fire and flush the ashes down the toilet then i want you to go and buy the lord of the rings and read that book it is so beautiful i cannot remember how many times i was brought to tears or just deeply deeply inspired by tolkien uh gosh i love him um here's a few things that struck me first of all there was this um well maybe not in order but i've been told what's going on in the world right now you know people i actually didn't know what was going on with afghanistan and biden until quite recently people were shocked that i hadn't heard of it but there you go and then people were saying things about pope francis or or some cardinal and i just thought to myself what i'm reading in the lord of the rings is actually more factual then whatever biden is doing and whatever superhero pope francis is doing i don't mean that it's not important what they're doing i just mean there's like a the deep mythology is somehow more factual and accurate and true than whatever is happening in this passing world and it reminded me of a scene from the lord of the rings in which the ants who are the sort of tree people um were unconcerned for the most part of the affairs of middle earth because they have lived for so long and they will continue to live um unless saruman gets his way of course and there was just this like yeah they're not concerned about it like we're like we're like a little story to them and i kind of thought that that was an interesting analogy for how we should view what's going on in the world right now like we are part as christians of a much larger story and so whatever biden or pope francis or some cardinal or some catholic youtuber said today eh like yeah there's some importance to it but it has to be viewed through the lens of the story as a whole namely christ has conquered death and has won the victory and our role is the same today as it was for christians a thousand years ago right to grow in holiness to evangelize our brethren and to bring as many people aboard the bark of peter as we can another thing that really struck me in in the lord of the rings was when tom bombadil who i never appreciated until this time around i've read the lord of the rings before but this time i got so much more out of it i would also say if you're gonna read the lord of the rings make sure you read it along with the map in the back of the book like actually consult that as you're reading through it it's marvellous but i i love tom bombadil and you know tom is this sort of i think his name means fatherless one he's a very mysterious figure in middle earth the ring has no impact on him he has no desire for it uh he doesn't go invisible when he wears it he can see frodo when frodo's invisible he's just completely uninterested in it right so he's this powerful figure and what struck me was when he said of farmer maggot i think i got his name right who who was this whatever this salt of the earth guy who the hobbits had a few run-ins with they didn't consider him very special but they were struck that father that um the tom bombadil spoke of farmer maggot with a reverence that surprised them which led them to believe that he was far more integral to the story as it were uh to the way events were unfolding than they had suspected and i just think that is a great way to think of things it's so easy to look past people look past the barista look past the person at the checkout counter to see them as unattractive or to see them as silly and not worthy of your conversation hopefully you would never think these things but as you decide where to put your attention i mean you've got to be discriminating right but this just reminded me that we are all part of this grand story and god is calling you to a specific mission which he needs you to fulfill um i celebrated my 15th wedding anniversary and my wife and i went away for a couple of overnights and i just was so struck by her i looked at her and i thought of what gandalf sorry of what tom bombadil said of farmer maggot just this idea that like i don't know who i'm looking at here this woman who i've now lived with in marriage for 15 years who i've drunk coffee with in places i've forgotten completely about and may never remember again here's this mystery this mystery who i get angry with who i'm sullen with at times who i'm not great to all the time who i repent towards who i want to love better this this person who i think i've figured out i really don't you know it actually brought me to tears man a lot of crying happened this this month um here's the final thing i'll point out about the lord of the rings that really struck me and that's that gandalf and others are saying things like not even the wise can see how this will all end and of course that's true uh i don't want to spoil it for you so if you haven't seen the movies if you haven't read the book maybe pause for the next 15 seconds here we go um yeah when you know frodo isn't the one who destroys the ring obviously it's gollum and we have no idea how things are going to work out in the end and i mean so many people looked at the idea of sending the hobbits into mordors this is a absolute fool's errand this is ridiculous right the ring should go to gondor we should wield it as as we see fit for the good of middle earth and things look so bleak so many times in the lord of the rings that you're like there's just this this is hopeless and i think you and i can fall into that despair when we look at the state of the church or our country no matter where we live i think there's kind of division everywhere you know but i think that's important to keep in mind you know that that um not um we not even the wise can see how things end and we have to continually continue to trust in the lord even when it feels like hope might be lost because i do think that and i've fallen prey to this as well like just giving up on everything and just being like yeah it's all screwed like america's burning whatever there might be truth in that but i also think being dismissive and hopeless is actually a kind of cowardly way out because if you if you just sort of throw your hands up and say well let the whole thing burn you're choosing not to invest any physical energy maybe in helping people but even the energy that your heart ought to be giving uh is sort of muted so i don't think that's a good thing to do and i think that the lord of the rings kind of help me understand that a bit more so go read the lord of the rings my goodness it was beautiful um okay what else i mean there's so much to say but i i don't want to bore you so maybe we'll just take some questions here um if you want to put your question in the live stream feel free to do that and i will take it if i see it um i also wanted to point out as these questions are coming in that we're still wanting to hire a full-time catholic jamie we have someone in mind um that i'll just be honest with you is is about to start but i don't have the funds yet so um part of the reason for that is even when people give on patreon like i get like a lot of people giving five bucks a month ten bucks a month or something but then every time the month comes around a lot of credit cards expired expire or people stop giving which is totally fine um so it's you know the more people who can give a small amount would really help because i'm giving i want to give and and will give this person a good wage um i want him to be very happy i want to be very happy i need to rely on him so i need to give him a full-time wage but in order to afford that i do need people to support us on patreon so if you want to go to patreon.comrad you can see all the gifts i give you in return uh also you can go at pints with aquinas.com give and give directly if you don't want to get through patreon that would help at a real time and thank you so much to all those who who are doing that i appreciate it oh man beautiful all right let's see here i'm going to go through some questions now emily says did you also give up music no i didn't i gave up my iphone um and i plan on giving it up forever now but i uh i did have a record player and i would play music you know it's it's weird when you think right that music was intended to be listened to while sitting down like even if you think of the old folk songs or the religious songs like you're supposed to be stationary either while you're singing them or listening to them the idea that it's like i'm going to get in my car and do this or i'm going to run around and do 100 different things i'm not saying it's a bad thing i'm just saying it was a strange experience to sit down and choose to listen to music as opposed to doing it on the go all right let's see excited for the show on dumb phones yes stay stay tuned for that i'll publish that maybe this week even colin carr good to see you mate he says what is the tech that you're most wary of now you're coming back to the internet i think my just my phone uh to be more broad about it so i'm gonna keep i'm gonna keep my dumb phone i'm gonna decide how i'm gonna shift you know because there's a lot of inconveniences that come from giving up your smartphone like i'd go to savannah for business the other day i had my dumb phone missed my flight and ended up in the airport for seven hours and you know that old saying it's great to have no wi-fi when you're in the airport for seven hours it's not not a true saying all right it's not a saying but yeah i said to sit around doing doing nothing and it wasn't pleasant you know i think we expect the same immediate gratification from quitting our phone as we do from our phone do you understand what i mean so you may have heard me say some things and you think yeah if i quit my my iphone i'm just gonna i'm gonna memorize poetry and read the lord of the rings and it's i'm gonna feel fantastic it's like no you're like it's gonna be really bloody difficult and it will continue to be difficult in certain ways you know like it's weird like i had to catch a taxi in savannah because i don't have a phone to catch an uber right all of this is to say i think the phone is what i'm most wary of i'm going to give that up i think permanently and i think the question is what inconveniences are you willing to accept in order to live a more peaceful more balanced uh life because it's definitely inconveniences uh for sure like ones that annoy you but it's like okay what am i willing to give up you know so that that's what i'm most willing to give up uh most looking forward to give up i should say um let's see here uh a dose of theosis uh also known as derek says are you anticipating the afterglow of the past month wearing off and how you will combat that no i'm not because i don't actually feel a glow now like it's not like i'm feeling elated with things um i certainly felt a certain amount of anxiety opening up my email and seeing a gazillion emails here's my fear my fear is that i'll just get sucked back into the vortex despite my best intentions so that's my fear ah glory to jesus christ josh says so good to see you back again matt glad you're back i don't know if this is your shabbat or not if it is g'day if it's not g'day what was your favorite thing about being away from the internet for a month days go slower my brain isn't divided between giving attention to my kids and giving attention to social media between taking my wife on a date and wondering if my youtube video is doing well like my brain's not divided uh andrew g'day andrew what kind of music did you listen to beard is on point by the way yeah we'll see how it lasts but thank you um yeah i like jazz a lot uh so i got some old jazz records some louis armstrong uh i got uh bonavir his first album for emma forever ago i was listening to that um i got my sister sent me the the best of the 1930s i really like old oldies kind of music so i was listening to that and i even uh got this is going to sound weird but this there's i like the zelda soundtrack and there's a lo-fi zelda track on youtube if you want to go listen to it just go check it out and they sell a record on amazon so i bought that too um so there you go okay let's see here what advice says anthony do you have for people who are throwing their hands up in the air because they have fought many battles and know that they have lost maybe an interior prayer life alone is better prayer life oh yeah i don't forgive me i don't fully understand the question but i will say this last night my wife and i watched hillbilly allergy on netflix i'm embarrassed that i still use netflix i don't think it makes it better that it's my mother-in-law's account but anyway it is a gorgeous movie it is a very intense movie i was exhausted watching it but that is a movie about not giving up hope even when you continue to fail my god it's glorious and i would highly recommend checking it out um certainly some troubling and dare i say triggering scenes nothing sexual but that's a great one you might want to check that out matt fred how was your family in australia i pray for the people there hard situation yeah i guess i'd just say it's nice to see australians finally beginning to rise up against tyrannical covert laws in my estimation um man oh that's cool okay voyager says yeah i stopped listening to music while i'm exercising and running cool so here's another thing that i noticed let me ask you this um i'm trying to think of how to how to put this would you ever eat mcdonald's again and maybe you don't eat mcdonald's but maybe you you know sometimes go there or a fast food chain you know not chick-fil-a that doesn't count that's heavenly would you eat a kind of low-grade fast food if you couldn't go through the drive-through like if the drive-through wasn't available would you actually go into mcdonald's and sit down order and eat it there i think a lot of people at least i would say no like i just wouldn't do that okay why well it's the convenience you know i'm willing to eat bad food if it's convenient okay here's the analogy i didn't listen to podcasts but i did allow myself to watch tv if you listen to the interview i had with dave rubin i was going to allow myself to watch movies tv and i never really did that because i don't love movies hillbilly elegy was beautiful but i don't really watch tv so it wasn't really a thing but i had no desire to watch a ben shapiro episode say or to or to have my wife play it in the background so i could listen to it or i'm not saying that ben shapiro is low quality i think he's doing a lot of great stuff i really do actually but my only point is would you listen to the podcasts you currently listen to if you had to sit down to listen to them i think most people would say no like you might say pints of aquinas like you're great but like i'm not going to sit down and listen to it i'm going to do while i'm in the car and we listen to it while i'm shopping i'm going to listen to it while i do the dishes i'm going to listen to while i exercise that's an interesting thing i think what podcasts would you and i be willing to listen to if we could only listen to them while sitting down i think that says something about the quality of those podcasts we're listening to i think what it says is we're willing to listen to podcasts just to distract us and to fill the void while we do other things but we wouldn't be willing to sit down to listen to them i think we should take like a real we should really think about that so i didn't listen to podcasts or watch them while i was away um and now that i'm not going to have a smartphone for those who just joined us i've decided to give up my smartphone and keep my dumb phone i'll do a whole episode of that maybe this week or next week i'm not going to listen to podcasts and i'm not going to miss them because all they were for me was background noise which filled my head with their opinions uh be they good or not while i did other things so that's something too i found very kind of interesting oh man so many questions this is cool oh this is beautiful look at this amy pitts buckner says can't wait to hear about the dumb phone i have decided i can't in good shape conscience preach to my son about its downsides and continue with this good for you i just don't know how i can yeah okay that's a fair point so what she's saying here is i i don't know what how can i live without having some kind of map system please watch my upcoming video on switching to dumb phones because i'm going to address these things because that like remember earlier i said what inconveniences are you willing to embrace that's not one of them for me like i'm not willing to embrace the inconvenience of not having maps it's just that's the one i'm just not willing to do that and i'm not really if i had to maybe i would be but i'm not terribly excited about buying a gps from walmart and having to update the software every so often so it doesn't get out of date you know so we'll definitely address this oh man let's see about um oh okay we have other questions here on uh okay what poem did i memorize uh it's called the grandeur of god uh by is it gerard manly hopkins who was a jesuit priest i may as well recite it if that's okay i'll see if i can remember it it's so beautiful the world is charged with the grandeur of god it will flame out like shining from shook foil it gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed why do men then now not wreck his rod generations have trod have trod have trod and all is seared with trade bleared smeared with toil and where's man smudge and shares man's smell the soil is bare now nor can foot feel being shod and for all this nature is never spent there lives the dearest freshness deep down things and though the last lights off the black west went oh morning at brown brink eastwood springs because the holy ghost over the bent world broods with warm breasts and with uh bright wings i'm much more excited about having memorized that than something michael scott said on the office ah oh god's grandeur somebody corrected me okay thank you all right this has been fun i only ever watch punch with the chronicles sitting on the sofa and paying full attention good job good job john williams um we're gonna take some more questions here i'm gonna let them fill up i wanna let people know especially if you're in the ohio area i'm gonna be giving a talk this what what night is it uh this friday night at steubenville ah no i don't think it's night time actually i think it's 3 p.m it's steubenville i'm going to be giving a talk on what thomas aquinas had to say about happiness remedies for sorrow big thank you to everybody who's got my new book how to be happy thomas aquinas's secret to a good life it's available on amazon and st paul center who's the publisher it'll also mas rhodes the publisher but you can buy it through saint paul center emmaus road it'll also be available on audible soon uh hopefully next month i or this month i recorded it and myself and i'm pretty proud of it it'll be releasing soon i'll let you know when that happens but if you have read the book would you please give it a five star review um or a one star review i suppose i don't want to tell you to be false but if you liked the book um please give us a five star review because yeah it was it was really cool uh to write that and then i tried to send 20 copies to my mum in australia and somehow i accidentally sent i sent 80 copies to my mom my mum's like what the bloody hell am i going to do with 80 copies of your book i mean i'm sorry i thought it was 20 copies i got 80 copies she's like do you want me to sell them no i don't want you to bloody sell them just give them away you know so anyway so she's giving him away there so if you know my mum ask her for a copy of the new book ah glory to jesus christ uh jorge says what happens to your spanish videos okay so we are currently in the process of starting tequila konakino everything is on track for that to be happening this is another reason you should support finance with aquinas because we are going to be paying somebody to run that who is a spanish speaker so it won't be awkward dubs of me um but you should have more information about that this month so i'm pretty excited about that ah glory to jesus christ let's see here jw says i'm thinking of adding a dumb phone to my cell service and keeping my smartphone in my car for the maps feature and impromptu necessary internet searches cool what's difficult about that is uh the lack of self-control that you might uh have and you might just kind of go back to it so again please check out my dumb phone video this week or next week i'll schedule it soon and i'm going to talk all about this okay let's see claire says matt i'm wanting to get rid of my smartphone but i'm a stay-at-home mom without much catholic community where i live i feel like my smartphone podcast social media helped me to feel less lonely that's awesome so i mean okay so one thing you could do is if you have an iphone you can block the app store in settings and you can actually set a code that like have your husband or have a friend set a code so that you can't unblock the app store without that code right and so once you've blocked the app store you can then delete all the apps that you want to delete and then you might just have podcasts on it or something like that so that's that's an option you might think about that uh dan kinsley says where's the talk friday you'd think i would know more wouldn't you about a talk that i'm giving um but i am just back on the internet let's let me just check if my assistant has put details on my bloated inbox 108 unread emails that's not as bad as i was thinking okay let's see calendar maybe she's put it in here ready set three okay 3 p.m steubenville talk location oh here we go uh gentile what okay is that it is is it gentile or did she misspell it a gallery franciscan university so yeah that's when it is and where it is ah ryan nice to see you matt glad to see you here again welcome back i pray august was awesome it was thank you so much uh this fellow says got my pints with aquinas mug looks good and is an appropriate drinking vessel this is this is uh reason number 502 that you should become a patron because i will send you a pints with aquinas beer stein slash coffee mug which is actually a pint size and you can that would be sweet uh oh i gotta show you this occasionally my patrons post these cool things and uh i want to show you this image that was sent to me from one of my patrons oh do i have it ah maybe maybe i i don't have it oh that's oh yeah i do here's the image here i'm just waiting for it to load apparently it's a billion a billion megabytes i don't know all right let me see if i can throw this up here i don't know who these fellows are and i actually don't have their names but how cool is that uh yes two blokes having some nausea beer um very cool stuff man so that's lovely all right let's see oh gentile is correct okay good javier says i'm late better late than never mate oh look at this fellow he says hi matt now watching pints with a nice and warm cup of irish coffee please pray for argentina i'm a priest here ah bless you father thank you for your priesthood thank you for your continual yes to our blessed lord despite whatever problems you're facing around you and within you thank you someone's from hungary nice to see you and this is beautiful okay let's see what else we have here derrick babb says hi matt so happy you're back my fiance and i just began our cia last week glory to our lord jesus christ glory indeed derek it's lovely to have you mate uh this fellow says how is jiu jitsu going if you're ever in green bay wisconsin you are super welcome to come blah blah blah 100 catholic owned wow that's awesome met my wife there that's funny given how close uh you have to be with each other in jiu jitsu yeah so jiu jitsu for me was a passing thing i did it like three times uh i would have continued except that the classes were at five and six pm which is just not a good time for me because i got to work and then i gotta go during dinner time um so i don't know if i'll go back i enjoyed my time there but i'm not sure if i'll continue let's see uh-huh this fellow or lady says on four hour drive for me to steubenville but i'm off work or friday all right i'll tell you what to do you know but um also i'll be signing books too after this speech of lecture whatever it is at 3 p.m on friday i have a stance stick around chat with whoever wants to chat to be nice to meet people who want to come matt says maximilian can you do more of those debates i love them yeah we have a couple lined up we have one on the immaculate conception coming up between a catholic and an orthodox um and i'm i'm trying to schedule at least one a month so yeah sarah says i love my smartphone awesome then you should keep it um if it's an ordinate love i suppose i should add there so today says emily i'm trying this thing where i'm deleting my social media apps at the beginning of each month until i have read two to three books you are beautiful what a lovely thing to do good on you man yeah super chat is off i i don't know i just uh i should turn it back on so i can make money shouldn't i but luke says matt how do i avoid the indoctrination of the public school system oh god i don't want to be a jerk and i don't want to tell you something that's going to sound pompous or that may strike you as me not understanding the needs you currently have but i would say take your kids out of public school yesterday um that's difficult maybe there's a lot of things that you have to rearrange but i wouldn't i wouldn't put your kids in public school honestly i wouldn't put my kids in 90 catholic schools but that's just me um plato versus aristotle i first read aristotle when i was doing my undergrad in philosophy and loved him i loved the nikki and ethics really enjoyed physics um yeah physics um plato though is some one you can pick up and read and understand immediately and then of course on further reading you'll understand that he's saying something much deeper than you first thought but aristotle can be very difficult at first but if you're interested there's a free e-book that i wrote it's below in the description it's the top link it's called you can understand thomas aquinas and in it we describe domestic metaphysical terminology which very often is synonymous with aristotelian metaphysical terminology so go check that out it's a free book just click the link top one in the description that might help you read aristotle um i'm just gonna have awkward silences like this while i read through your comments is that okay i mean that or i could just go but i'm just kind of enjoying this this is a nice sort of slow getting back to the internet sweet we have big plans for this studio i should point out especially when we get catholic jamie here full time which again i'm doing i kind of wish that i would say to you only once we reach this goal will i do it but i'm just so impatient that i've i've hired this person who we'll talk about more and it's about to start um so please support us patreon.comfrat or pintswithaquinas.com give whatever you can give would be bloody huge and if you don't want to do that and if you can't afford it please don't feel bad i'll have people come up to me like hi i'll paint the quietness i'm not a i'm not a patron i'm like it's so okay like i am a fan of podcasts and i don't support them even though they beg me so please don't feel bad it's totally fine oh this is not a beer yeah somebody just asked what i'm drinking this is liquid death which is a it's water things aren't that bad that i'm drinking at 10 12 in the morning um oh andrea that's so kind of you to say so glad you're back thank you very much uh shawsha says watching matt while i have lunch love from ireland bless you bless you my my friend it's great to have you here jason phillips would love to see a series of deep dives into theology especially the foundational stuff had a couple of debates with friends over the justification of the papacy in the last while okay awesome well um let me tell you uh who i'm gonna have on the show this month um it's in my calendar we have let's see uh sister natalia the byzantine nun who i've had on the show before she's you know younger than me uh beautiful gosh she's beautiful uh that'll be next week we have i'm interviewing the week after ins all these are in studio by the way that's the other thing that's really cool i'm flying people into steubenville every week and putting them up at hotels because i would rather sit down and have a beer and chat with somebody than have a skype interview so that's the other thing that your patron am i hitting the patreon thing too hard no not even close that's the other thing your patreon money goes to support me paying their flights be paying their hotels and things like that so after sister natalia on the 14th we have shane page who was a methodist pastor and he had a massive congregation in either north or south carolina and i spoke to him on the phone while he was still a pastor but he decided to become catholic so we're on the phone and he's saying to me he's like listen if the eucharist is not truly the body blood soul and divinity of jesus christ i'm about to do the most stupidest thing i have ever done because he's got a family and he's not going to have health insurance well he's he's quit and i don't know if he has a job or anything right now but he's going to be in the studio and we're going to be discussing that how amazing is that the week after i have suwon flying him in and we're going to discuss the papacy in depth uh we just did a seven-part video series on the papacy that he led for all my patrons it's free if you're a patron so go check that out and oh i'm gonna be on the babylon b this month you guys fans of the babylon b i guess on the 28th i'm doing the recording i don't know if it's live or not uh but that week i'll also be interviewing sam guzman from the catholic gentleman i've got a ton of people lined up and i'm really excited about it so uh yeah i hope that excites you too let's see here um pines super top homie says how do you practice chastity when it actually becomes an adv active choice rather than circumstance well i mean chastity should always be an active choice i mean i'm married my wife has been sick for quite a while i won't get into the details but uh abstinence is required in in marriage uh in certain circumstances but of course chastity is that virtue which enables us to love rightly love patiently you know um abstinence is a negative word it just means what you're not doing chastity you might say means what you are doing and so whether you're not married or you're a priest or you are married chastity is required like whether you're single chastity is required uh so it's hard man like it's bloody difficult and i'm not sure if maybe in our zeal to promote chastity certain people including myself may have i think have overstated just like hey the law will give you the grace it's super easy i mean of course the law will give you the grace but you know this you just got to do it and we maybe we haven't been as honest about how how bloody difficult it can be you know i've got friends of mine who are they they haven't they haven't come together in the marital embrace for months because you know uh either she's exhausted with children or he doesn't have a job and or there's health issues like it's it's it's it's tough work um and i think that doesn't mean we get rid of chastity but it might mean we have to be more honest about it you know about how difficult it can be and yet nevertheless look at christ on the cross you know which again is one of those throwaway lines so forgive me for doing that but yeah let's see oh cool a lot of people are excited they're going to be on the babylon b nice you should invite back peter craft i should he is just a gem i love him so much i haven't actually read your comments about what you thought of that interview because i was offline so i haven't checked him but i hope you liked it i what a beautiful man i just love him so much i love the babylon bee cool well hopefully you'll enjoy my interview on it also i was on michael knowles's show last month he interviewed me in july because i said i was off in august and then he posted the clip in august so if you're interested if you like that guy michael knowles there's a clip on his channel you could watch that we talk about pornography and biden and things like that let's see here this fellow or this lady says don't want to knock rcia but they don't go far enough you should consider the tlm for traditional i mean i i wouldn't necessarily agree with that sentiment but i suppose those who are going can hopefully make that judgment for themselves i've certainly had instances where i this is an interesting story um oh wow so i helped convert a guy who was a playboy producer um and he was going to be brought into the church and he wanted me to be his sponsor and uh that didn't end up happening for different reasons but he was going through rcia and it wasn't a good experience so i'd you know and he didn't even realize it wasn't a good experience at the time because he wasn't as educated as maybe he would be so i see the point i think that's uh that that you know you've got to be discerning um although he was in san francisco so i'm not sure you know what that's uh well luke howard matt talking with dr taylor marshall would be the ultimate crossover much better than infinity war yeah maybe i don't know um have i ever been to a mass celebrated by the institute of christ the king yeah aren't those the blokes in chicago because i've been there and gee that was lovely they also celebrate the nervous order beautifully too did you hear about mass of the ages matt it came out a few weeks ago about the tlm i actually think i'm in that aren't i or maybe i'm not in it but i know i think he interviewed me for it uh but okay cool i didn't know it was out and i'm sure it's lovely actually what a time to release it huh oh here's another thing that i've been doing if i don't know if you guys are interested in this or not um i've been i've been doing intermittent fasting and i have no self-control so if you're like oh gosh another one of these people that's not me i am hopeless but i've actually been doing it i've actually been really liking it i i basically like last night i went to 5pm the day before that like i'm trying to get to after 3 p.m every day so i basically wake up pound a bunch of espresso drink water all day um have a cigar or a pipe and then that's been really cool i've been that's another thing i've been doing this this time away matt what do you think is a bigger problem than the left's gender ideology on abortion well crikey uh i would have to spend time thinking about it but i would say it's a pretty bloody big problem and ought to be resisted with tremendous vigor and creativity um how's that oh i'm so glad that sarah says would you consider doing another show with rachel killackey she's beautiful in she i'm so glad you enjoyed that yeah sure i'm open to having her on um intermittent fasting is amazing i do it almost every day can i be honest the reason i do it is because i'm i just i'm not exercising right now like i'm going for walks and stuff but like i'm not i'm not doing much so uh that's kind of the reason you know maybe i'll do that um can i just say too i love living in steubenville um this is an interesting podcast isn't it i'm just like chatting with you about whatever i want to chat about but i was in savannah last week by the way it's really funny when you're an australian and you don't know how to pronounce things properly because i'm like should i be saying savannah savannah feels american but then i look at it and i guess i'd say savannah anyway so i was in savannah and savannah's beautiful right it's a beautiful town by the ocean lovely little walking walkable downtown lots of history great little jazz club that my friend and i went to and while i was there i thought i can't wait to get back to steubenville now let me just put that into perspective right steubenville is a town in ohio that is very run down we had a 500 000 meth bust on the street uh one street over from where my street is it's not funny not laughing um you know there's this there's there's definitely prostitutes occasionally there's definitely potholes there's definitely broken down buildings i love it so much i love it so many beautiful people we had someone come in to do some construction on our house the other day right and he's a big burly bloke doing construction and he's like oh are you coming to macbeth in the park you know shakespeare in the park tonight because he was in it i just love that my like maintenance guy is also acting in this voluntary shakespeare in the park you know and so the whole catholic community shows up and others show up and they did macbeth and i've never watched macbeth i've never read macbeth and i really enjoyed it my kids went like three times in a row there's just so many beautiful people here also there's a house on my street right now for 85 000 and it's five bedrooms that's the other thing that's awesome about living in a rundown town um kind of tempted to see if we can take out a loan and maybe rent it to some good catholic family but i just love living here that's it you can ask me how i feel in january when the snow is falling and it's freezing and all that but i just love it i've been going to midday mass at the university with my kids and seeing all the college students they're just so beautiful i just i just love it so much um dan kinsley mate i don't know if i've met you yet i don't think i have but i know you said you were moving to steubenville so i'll i'll try to make it to holy master at 12 so if you're there maybe come say good day all right let's see here matt hi matt do you know that in australia right now heaps of people are being forced to get that jab in order to keep their jobs bishops have said nothing about this i'm still thinking this through all right can i can i share this with you i think the lockdown measures in australia are nuts and i'm really glad to see australians pushing back um there is a monopoly on the news that seems to be in australia in a way that there isn't here you know if memory serves and i've been out of the country for you know many years now you kind of have one narrative it would be like living in america but you only have msnbc um and you don't have kind of competing voices and and and things like that like you don't have fox news you have daily white you know you just got this one narrative so in australia this is this is as i'm thinking it through right i need to do more thinking on this but it kind of feels like yeah like um people are just it just feels a lot more peaceful because there's no loud opposing voices in the same way that there are here but i just don't like it i mean i don't like how my i've spoken to my family in australia and they say things that i'm just like why are you talking about the government like that like one person said to me and i won't say which family member but they said yeah i mean it's pretty intense but like you know they're doing what's best for us i'm like dude you say that about your parents you don't say that about your government so i don't know if i've just drunk the kool-aid but i just think it's ridiculous that australians are putting up with this and i've been thrilled i'm not sure how much i can say before i get banned but i've been thrilled to see people shall we just say pushing back in australia because it's nuts as far as the jab what do you guys think about this right because i'm not opposed to people getting vaccinated um i don't think it's immoral even though i know many people do i don't like the idea of people getting forced to do what they don't want to do because well because your body your choice right i agree with that your body is your choice you know oh the fetus that's not your body so shut up but people maybe being forced to do this seems a bit ridiculous here's the here's an argument that though i've thought of i can i see the logic right a lot of companies had to shut down during covert and many went bankrupt and will never come back again others are unable to run a successful business into the future unless people get vaccinated because if they're not vaccinated then they're more likely to get sick or to be around somebody who's sick and then have to mandatory you know take ten days off and then you can't run a business like that like i see that argument but i still think it's wrong to tell people what they can do with their bodies in that sense that that's kind of where i'm at right now listen to me i have not been on news for the last 30 days so if there have been developments and i don't know about them please show me some mercy um but there you are i tell you what though i don't know about you but i kind of missed trump i i like i know trump was gross in different respects but so were you i kind of wonder how how if we could have put up with the with the angry absurd tweeting and not have just what had in afghanistan i'm not a political commentator i'll shut up but i kind of miss him and i kind of think he's hilarious my friend and i were uh this is several months back we were at his cabin and we were looking for something to watch that was funny so we watched the office and that got boring we looked for something else and then we just watched the best of donald trump i like him so i'm not saying he's moral or great or i agree with him he says i'm not saying he's on a phony in different respects i'm just saying i prefer him to joe bloody okay um hey i wanna let you guys know too that i have a new channel called sips with aquinas so if you guys want to see the little clips we put out from all the interviews you can't get them here anymore you can only get them at sips with aquinas so please go check that out and subscribe what do i think about christendom college i think good things um ah here we go here's all the trump things ah man all right this is this is lovely what else we got here hi matt do you think literature like lord of the rings which can quite beautifully convey spiritual truth is nonetheless a lesser form of expressing truth than reading the bible of course yeah i mean um the bible is the word of god the lord of the rings is not so it's not inspired in the same way that the bible is that said i think the lord of the rings is inspired and i think one can learn a great deal of spiritual truth from it so um but you see the other thing is like i think we can fall into this false dichotomy too where right where we're like well the bible's the best thing to read so why would i read anything else it's like well because you know you're a human at a certain stage of maturity and other works can open you up to the deep truths that here to for you have missed in holy scripture you know sir um that's what i would say let's see andrew says i listened to someone talking about the vaccine debate and she was saying that the opinions on it seem to be based on what you're more afraid of yeah i'm i'm sorry i'm just not going to wear a mask again because i'm not sick and if i am sick i'm going to stay inside it's just what i'm doing i'm also going to find priests who who will never again deny me the sacraments you should find a priest like that so there you go [Music] have matt walsh on yeah i should i really like him did you see his talk to the um [Music] school board he did that uh go check it out check out matt walsh school board that was excellent man there are so many of you right now oh my gosh kelly i'm so sorry my husband might lose his job for 27 years because of the mandatory jab we're in a very hard place i'm so sorry kelly do i think about the university of dallas i've heard very good things about the catholic presence on the university of at the university of dallas when or will sibling horror be making a return so if you're not familiar my sister and i write short supernatural suspense stories called sibling horror we pay an american to read them it's a podcast you can also buy the book on amazon about one percent of my audience is interested in it but i am writing another story right now um and maybe it'll be in time for halloween we'll see man there's a lot of people who are upset about trump and stuff and biden by the way thank you people who live in different parts of the world to allow me to talk about uh trump and biden i know that doesn't really uh interest you perhaps ah what dumb phone do you have i will be making that announcement in an upcoming live stream where i'm going to talk all about dumb phones hopefully this week or next week so hopefully you can [Music] join me for that yup joseph pierce is one of the people we're looking for so check that out um andrew did you develop any new hobbies when you were away any that you were able to delve into more reading consistently smoking daily um going to holy mass like i pretty much got a holy mess almost every day um yeah man okay let's see alex i'm about to move across the country for my first full-time job do you have any advice of okay so can i just like wax on this maybe eloquently maybe not okay i wish that i did this this is what matt fradd wishes he did when it comes to where we moved and i didn't have the option at the time because we were you know not well we didn't have different different opportunities were available at the time but i wish i had done this i wish i had found a solid catholic community that would make raising catholic children easier life is hard enough already i wish i had of moved honestly i wish i had a move to steubenville right after we got married now i couldn't have seen how things would have evolved podcasts weren't a thing when i got married you know so but i wish that i had a move to a solid catholic community and that would be my advice as much as it's worth to anybody out there if you're thinking of starting a catholic family like if you're catholic and you want a catholic family find a community of people that you love and respect and trust and just buy a house and don't move um maybe that's franciscan sorry maybe that's steubenville maybe that's some place in wyoming or even in california there's great communities there around tac and other places find a place and plant yourself there yeah um one of the things i like about steubenville is you have this strong catholic community in a kind of run downtown and i am not saying that you can't have a solid healthy catholic community that you create from scratch i'm sure you can but i think we can all see how things could go pear-shaped in a community like that and many of us may have examples of how things went pear-shaped they have the best intentions but it's very insular and it can get weird i'm not saying always i think there's some great catholic communities that are trying to begin right now um veritat of splenda down in tyler texas would be one of them but i personally love that my kids encounter homeless people and um see a rundown town that's trying to trying to grow again i love that i also love that my kids get exposed to college students who love their faith i took my kids to confession last night at franciscan there's always confession available so i went to the university there was probably a confession started at seven to eight we got there at 6 50 and i'd say there was about 30 people in front of us and they're all these beautiful college students you know university students whatever and that was just terrific it's so lovely to have my kids exposed to that so i i would recommend doing that um i would much rather live here in community than in hawaii without it i'm not saying you can't find community in hawaii you know but i love living here have i said that all right what else uh matt why are you drinking a drink called liquid death is that really from god well i think the water and the can would not exist without god nor would the marketing whatever you think about it um it i think it's referring to killing your thirst uh so uh you know i it's my favorite soda water actually uh carly g'day i haven't seen you around before so it's lovely lovely to see you here if your ministry wasn't online based would you cut the internet out of your life like you have for the past month yeah i think i would i've actually been struggling this month with two competing thoughts one is maybe i should just quit my job maybe i should quit pints with aquinas and then another part of me says no you should be more grateful for what the lord has given you and you should take responsibility for the modest platform that you've been given and not whine about wanting to be offline um i'm so afraid of becoming a catholic hack maybe i am one um and and saying well but matt like your your podcast has really helped people yeah but everyone's podcast has helped somebody you know like if you have more than 10 listeners to your podcast you've probably had one of them reach out to you and say this really helped me but i don't know if that's a good reason to go on forever like how long is pints with aquinas supposed to go on is it the next 10 years 20 50 until i'm like 82 i don't know so i was just like praying lord what do you want how do i be obedient to your will and how do i know that i'm even open to doing your will you know but i was actually in savannah and i was with sheamus cochlin who runs freedom turns great youtube channel if you haven't checked it out freedom tunes and he was so great because he was experiencing something similar and he said to me you know we we need to pray to be grateful because if somebody handed us this apostolate whether that be pine to the aquinas or freedom tunes as it is today hey i want you to run it for now and have all the benefits of it if we showed the same gratitude towards them as we are currently to like god and the hard work we've put into it we'd be they'd be really offended so i'm grateful to almighty god for this for this blessing um and i pray it's a blessing and and i pray i'm not a catholic hack and if i am i pray that i'll repent who knows they're a hack you know that's the thing how do you know i after i get off the smartphone for a while one thing i'd like to do is go off email oh i just want to gradually detach myself that's very nice of everybody saying don't quit yes yes yes thank you very much hey um i want to show you guys something [Music] excuse me um all right i'm going to show you this there oh gosh i can't find it oh i cannot believe you're sticking around through this there's no way i would i would just be gone um i want to show you uh if i can let's see if i can do this oh i want to show you ethos logos investments i advertise with these guys before they're going to come back on this month i've but i was i guess never really thought of investing um but you might want to check it out ethos logos investments i'll put a link in the description below especially sharing with people here in steubenville who are talking about how important it is that we we support places that are supporting the common good that aren't kind of contributing to sex trafficking or pornography or environmental depletion unnecessary environmental depletion or things like that you might consider going to ethos logos investments it's el investments.net el investments.net it says we all want to make the world a better place the magnitude of the challenge can be discouraging the solution is to focus on our own sphere of influence ethos logos investments enables good people to expand their sphere of influence via faith based socially and environmentally responsible investing while edifying those investors with complete honest financial advice and service so it's el investments.net if you're interested in looking into them i'm looking forward to learning more about them because i don't have a lot i don't think to invest right now but i'd like to do more of that okay um i'm going to start to wrap up now i think brian says are the new polity guys okay with ethos logos investments pr i don't know they might not be i i don't even know what i think of the new polity guys like jacob imam is one of my best mates here in steubenville and i'm still like dubious about certain things that he says so you and i can process that together but i haven't asked them actually uh guys this has been a pleasure thank you for being here thank you for your support thank you for watching me and this um this is just such an honor and i am so grateful to be here even if i am a catholic hack i am so glad to do this work i'm so glad to introduce you to some beautiful guests that i'm be i'll be flying in over the course of the next month or two and and beyond i'm so excited to hire catholic jamie who you'll learn more about soon um i i really do ask though if you love pints with aquinas and you want to see to it that i can afford to pay a full-time video guy an assistant if we want to start a tequila con aquino if i'm to pay debaters which i do right uh even when they're online i pay them if i can keep affording to fly people out and put them up in hotel rooms and not to mention make a salary for myself and live in steubenville and send my kids to college and things like that um please support us uh patreon.com patreon.comrad or go give at pints with aquinas.com give when you do we give you free things in return like books and beer steins and stickers and you get access to online courses that we're continually cranking out and i do pray it's a blessing to you if you don't want to no worries but if if you could do it honestly i think the main hassle for people isn't the giving it's the pulling out their credit card thing i think most people like sure i'd buy you a coffee every month i'd give you 10 bucks a month that's fine or two coffees you know but i have to let my credit card like i know it's a pain um so if you do it i just want you know i'm super grateful um because i'm i'm pumped just about making this channel the best it can be and look i got a middle camera like here's one expense i've got a middle camera here that keeps blacking out i got to buy a brand new camera and that's over 2 grand no worries so thank you to all of my patrons who are watching because you are what keeps the show going you're what we'll be paying for this camera and the different equipment that we're going to have uh setting up so so thank you um oh my gosh i'm sorry i just saw a comment that i i just need to call out so rotten of you to this is why i don't miss the internet is because of people like nancy so rotten of you to say that you are not having sex with your wife right now first of all i don't think i said that explicitly i think i said that sometimes in marriage abstinence is called for you know when your spouse is sick this is something my wife speaks openly about on her podcast i'm not divulging anything she would not have me divulge so there's that and then she says that's like putting up a sign for women to hit on you okay i really don't think so calm down first of all i don't think anyone would be interested hitting on me and that's absolutely not why i said it so i'm sorry that your husband did that i'm sorry for whatever wounds you've received because of your stuff that sucks but that's not my issue and it's it's not my wife's issue so i hope you'll find healing um and maybe try to be a little bit more charitable next time when you hear people express personal things god bless you all bye

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 21,921

Rating: 4.9621592 out of 5

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

Id: gWThIt-hIh4

Length: 72min 48sec (4368 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021