Fasting, Confession, and the Lost Art of Discipline | Michael Knowles

America isn’t just politically divided—it’s spiritually and physically depleted. From collapsing testosterone and dopamine addiction to the loss of ritual, discipline, and meaning, something deeper is unraveling. In this powerful Catholic vs. Protestant conversation, Michael Knowles and I unpack the real war facing our nation—and how to rebuild strength in body, mind, and soul. Watch The Dr. Josh Axe Show every Monday & Thursday on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drjoshaxe?sub_confirmation=1 🎧 Early Access! Our podcast listeners get every episode early, and you can tune in and be a part of our exclusive listeners below → Spotify Apple Podcast Order my NEW BOOK, The Biblio Diet → https://bit.ly/4oPEP3t Watch my free training on how to naturally balance your blood sugar and reverse your symptoms → DrAxeDiabetesClass.com Discover practical steps you can take today to start healing your thyroid naturally → DrAxeThyroidClass.com If you’re ready to start feeling like yourself again and balance your hormones, take my free class → DrAxeHormoneClass.com Uncover what’s really going on in your body with advanced biomarker testing for hormones, thyroid, and metabolism— plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor! → MyBloodWork.com CONNECT WITH DR. JOSH AXE Instagram Facebook TikTok X LinkedIn Website Sign up for my newsletter Ask me a question CONNECT WITH GUEST Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaeljknowles/?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michaelknowlesshow/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/discover/michael-knowles X: https://x.com/michaeljknowles The Michael Knowles Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr4kgAUTFkGIwlWSodg43QA DISCLAIMER This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Josh Axe and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Axe nor the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

  If the body really matters, and the spirit also really matters, and the two cannot be separated, it seems to me we need a sacramental theology. If you had 60 seconds to convert me to Catholicism, what's your elevator pitch? I would go to, for a lot of people, I'd go to sacrament. I would go to antiquity, the way that the Church Fathers spoke about the Catholic Church, or the way that St. Augustine a little later says, "Rome has spoken, the matter is settled." What I would point to is the Nicene Creed. Let's talk about fasting. Yes. What do you think?

• 1:22Josh Axe?

  From collapsing sleep and hormone health to dopamine overload to young people feeling lost and numb and desperate for purpose, we are clearly in a spiritual war. And today I'm joined by Michael Knowles for a wide-ranging, honest discussion about what modern technology is doing to our minds, our masculinity, our femininity, and we're going to also talk about how our mental health is connected to our spiritual health and even connected to politics and beyond. Michael, welcome to the show. Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, I'm so excited. Well, you know, I'm excited to dive into things regarding health and faith and so many of the other things I know that you're an expert in. And one of the things I've really appreciated, I've watched a lot of your content over the

• 2:05Josh Axe?

  years and been so impressed with your just breadth of knowledge, especially topics like fasting. Philosophy, I've really, you know, and just in religion, I know you're really well studied on some of these topics. But one of the other things I want to get in today and maybe even start the show off with is talking a little about our faith. And I just shared this with you a few minutes ago. I grew up with a family that was half Catholic, half Protestant. And my mom, who is Protestant, my grandmother, who is Catholic, I mean, there were some real duels going on.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  I mean, moms and grandmas just on anything can really butt heads. That's a big one.

• 2:37Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah. So, and the thing, both of them were so devout, like my grandmother would spend, you know, hours in prayer, would never miss a mass, never miss confession. And, uh, and my mom was the same way. My mom was so devout in their faith. And so they had their disagreements. At the same time, I, I am so grateful for it because I think it really helped me develop and grow spiritually and really appreciate both the Protestant viewpoints, the Catholic viewpoints.

• 3:02Josh Axe?

  And one of the things I've noticed, and I'd love to get your take on this, I feel like when I was growing up, there was a greater separation and maybe even this, to a point even unhealthy rivalry between the Catholic church and the Protestant church. And I feel like maybe a younger generation, like, like I personally care a lot less if somebody's Catholic or Presbyterian or charismatic. I care a lot more about, hey, the person's character and their relationship with God. And so, yeah, what, what, what is your take and viewpoint on, on that?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Well, unless they're Methodists and then you just cast them out into the darkness. Yes, there's, there's been some tension going back to, I guess, the 16th century or so, you know, there were some decades of war in there. However, you know, your story is very interesting because for me, I was raised Catholic, but it was kind of cradle Catholic at a time when there was a lot of cafeteria catechesis, you take this, you leave that. It was the nineties, it was a little weak. And I was an atheist, uh, around, starting around the age of 13. I came back into faith. Uh, I came back to believe that God existed at 18 or 19. Then I believed that Jesus was something approximate to who he says he is, uh, 20, 21.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  And then I returned to the church at about 23. And part of the way I came back was through some Protestants. It was through, well, C. S. Lewis for one. Chesterton became Catholic, but when he was writing Orthodoxy, he was still Anglican. Guys like Alvin Plantinga. He was a very important Calvinist philosopher, many of whose arguments I now no longer even agree with, but I just, I really found him very fruitful, very important to think upon when I was 18. A lot of other guys like that, too. And I think this is one of the tricks of modernity is, we started to fall out of faith as a civilization. Well, we started to fall out of faith right, right around the time we got booted out of the Garden of Eden. But at a civilizational level, we started to fall out of faith at the beginning

• 5:00Speaker 01

  of modernity. Part of that was accelerated by the Protestant Revolution and some of the religious wars. A lot of that was accelerated by the Enlightenment and so-called, and liberalism and all the rest. And so, curiously, as, as we return to faith, which I think is manifestly happening all over the West, some of those, some of those ideas that led people off the track, I think are actually necessary as bridges to bring people back. They're very helpful. And so, you know, even the resurgence in politics in classical liberalism and an interest in, say, John Locke or John Stuart Mill in recent years, even that is a way, I think, a bridge back to a more stable and sturdy civilization, because a lot of people recognize something has gone wrong.

• 5:45Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Politically, personally, people are more depressed, anxious, suicidal, basically, than they've ever been. We look around, there's no trust in our civilization anymore, in our societies. Law and order are breaking down. And so, something's going wrong and people realize, all right, I guess we need an alternative to this. And ultimately, that is going to lead you back to first principles and the most basic questions.

• 6:08Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah, I love that. You know, I really feel like COVID accelerated a lot of things. And one of the things I, I saw in, in quite a few people was, it's like, well, if I can't trust my government, and the CDC, and the medical establishment, if I can't trust any of these people, sort of, what is truth, or where do I find truth?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  And it, it's even trickier, I think, for a lot of people, which is, yeah, okay, I can't trust Dr. Fauci, obviously.

• 6:33Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  I can't trust statesmen in the government. There are liars, globalists, all these people.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  However, with the rise of the transgender ideology especially, which was the apotheosis of private judgment as a political ideology, right? The notion that no physical evidence can possibly tell you who a person is. I can only trust myself. But if I as an individual am getting even that basic question wrong, am I a man, am I a woman? Then it means, well, maybe you can't actually even trust yourself. So there's a crisis of institutional authority, but there's even a crisis for private judgment. Where does that leave us?

• 7:14Josh Axe?

  You know, there's this quote by Dostoevsky where he says something like, you know, "The worst lie is essentially a lie to yourself."

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:20Josh Axe?

  You know, it's that sort of idea. And that's true. I mean, that's true. And that's something we see constantly people doing. And again, people sort of trying to operate in a morally gray area and lying, you know, for personal benefit, but maybe even, you know, justifying it in different ways. But yeah, I totally agree. You know, when I first got in practice and I opened up a practice here, end of 2007 in Nashville, functional medicine practice, the conditions I saw the most that were growing like crazy were a lot of hormonal issues in men and women.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:50Josh Axe?

  I mean, cancer was still on the rise, diabetes in kids and obesity. But over the last five years for sure, maybe 10 years, it's mental health issues, it's identity issues. It's these types of problems. And I will tell you, there's hardly a condition I can think of that's a, that doesn't have some sort of emotional mental component. There's not an identity issue. I just got off, I trained practitioners and I was, I was, I was... People tend to ask me questions when they're stuck, right? And so it's like, okay, I've got this patient and they're dealing with this. And one of the things that I've really discovered is for most people, if they've changed their diet and they're still not getting better.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:30Josh Axe?

  Well, there's been past childhood trauma. There's identity issues, there's lack of purpose. Those are the biggest drivers, I believe, of actual health issues today.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. In order to address these problems, I totally agree that you have to take an integrated approach. It's not merely physical. Sometimes it's... Psychological, mental, intellectual, or spiritual. Because human beings are both of those things. And I think this is why a lot of people don't have faith in therapists. It's one of the reasons I'm very skeptical of therapists. Even though I think in principle, psychological therapy could be a great thing. But I'm very skeptical of a lot of them. Because I think, well, a lot of them don't know what a human being is. And if you don't know what a human being is, you're probably not going to do a great job at treating the ills that befall human beings. So that's really the first question. And my buddy Matt Walsh had this movie,

• 9:24Speaker 01

  What is a Woman?, that came to dominate the political discourse for a while. And there's actually an even more fundamental question than that, which is, what is a man? What is man? And there is an answer. The answer is that man is body and soul. And the soul is the form of the body. So it's the principle of the body. It's what distinguishes the matter, you know, makes us all up, from other matter, from the teacup, or the desk, or the microphone. Okay, so how do we know that? Well, we know that because we're rational creatures. How do we know we're rational creatures? Because we can speak in a way that's intelligible. So I can say things to you, and I'm using these symbols that are sounds coming out of my mouth.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  And you perceive those sounds, and they're not just cacophony, I hope, most of the time. They're symbols that actually mean something. And so you can know what I'm referring to. If that works, the only way that can work is if there is a truth that is outside of me and you. Which means there is some objective reality. Which means that the universe is intelligible. That actually tells us something about the existence of God. But furthermore, it tells us that there is a part of our nature that is not merely flesh. Yeah. Not merely corruptible. And so, one mistake people make is, and this has been true for many centuries, is we tend to Analogize our bodies to predominant technologies.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  So when the steam engine was really popular, you had Freud. You know, and you had this idea that people are just full of steam and they have to blow off a little steam. And so, you know, if you have some temptations, you need to indulge them sometimes because that's, that's how you're going to relieve the pressure and not explode. Now Aristotle would disagree with that. Aristotle would say, no, no, if you have temptations, you need to fight those temptations, such that you cultivate habits of virtue that will, over time, make it actually less tempting to sin, more difficult to sin, and easier and more attractive to do virtuous acts. Those are completely incompatible, contradictory conceptions of what a human being is. Now we can fast forward past Freud, who's a little passe, steam engine, not so much in use anymore, and we analogize our mind to a computer.

• 11:38Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  So we say, well, now we're going to live forever by uploading our consciousness, whatever that means. Another perennial fact of how we think about human nature is we keep trying to think of ways to cheat death.

• 11:50Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  It's been true since the pharaohs and it's true today. The Silicon Valley pharaohs think they're going to upload their consciousness. But they're still kind of missing the point, which is, well, what, what is my mind or my brain? And so when we analogize our, our intellect to a computer.

• 12:07Josh Axe?

  Can I just, I just say this real quick? It makes me think of this. You know, we're, we're going to have a new heavens, new earth, new bodies. It'd be so funny if these people uploaded their things to a machine and then they have the kind of inferior sort of, you know, they're really going to be missing out.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, good luck. You're on a, you're on a screen. I've got a glorified body, which has all these great attributes.

• 12:24Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's their mistake that they make. And, and so the point of that analogy ultimately is that, well, we're all just stuff. It's just another form of materialism. But what if we're not? You know, the, the example that I just gave of the fact that we can communicate would seem to imply that there is an immaterial component. St. Thomas Aquinas puts this in a better way, as he puts most things compared to how we all talk about them.

• 12:51Josh Axe?

  He's the best.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  He's, he's the man, you know? He just, you open the Summa, there's an answer for every question you want. What to have for breakfast on Tuesday, it's there. And St. Thomas Aquinas points out, and he's following Aristotle, that our intellect cannot be the same thing as our brain. A lot of modern people think our intellect or our mind is the same thing as our brain. And what we conceive of as being our intellect is really just pistons firing in the brain. And, you know, take away the brain, you take away our intellectual character. Thomas Aquinas says, no, because the, the brain receives immaterial forms, ideas, numbers, pictures, right? Well, immaterial pictures.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  And so like, just like the eye receives color, the, the eye receives something which is material, just like my hand can feel heat or cold or texture. So too, the mind is receiving things which are immaterial. But that means that the mind cannot itself be material because it could not receive that which is beyond it. So, you know, this is all kind of scholastic language, I guess. But the upshot of it all is, there has to be something in my thinking that is not material, which means that there's something about me which is not material, which means that Aristotle is right and human beings are polymorphic creatures.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  We're stuff, we're matter, but we're also form, we're also soul. And the, it's a very lengthy way of saying, if you want to try to treat human maladies, you have to recognize that there is an immaterial spiritual component as well.

• 14:32Josh Axe?

  Yeah, you know, when I, when I, I, this past year, I wrote a book, basically going through what the Bible says about health. It's called the Bibliodiet. And one of the things that really stood out to me was, I mean, the Bible actually has a lot of advice on health and diet, especially going back to the Old Testament. But what Jesus is constantly saying to people is, it's not, you know, to be made well, he's not recommending a food, he's not recommending herbs, he's not recommending medication. It's really tied to our faith and our belief in Christ that heals us. You know, and one of the things that I, I didn't experience much growing up, and I know there's some churches that do this more than others, but it's like, you know, if you read the book of James and it says, hey, if you're sick, go to the elders of the church, have

• 15:17Josh Axe?

  them lay their hands on you, have them anoint your head with oil and pray for you for healing, and you will be well. You know, that's, you know, have you ever experienced that in a, in a church? Or a?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  I've certainly had people pray for me.

• 15:31Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  And happily, I've never had a. Severe illness, that's, you know, really been, or I'm calling the priest for last rites or something, thank God. But, you know, it's a very crucial point, because it's not to say that we need to ignore medicine, it's not to say that we need, just as we would not ignore our bodies, you know, we're material creatures in the world. I mean, the central event of the Christian faith is something called the incarnation. Yeah. It involves time and space and, and the body. But likewise, we can't ignore the spiritual component and the intellectual component. You know, we're, we're an integrated whole. And, and even that, even once you establish that, that, you know, there's a role for prayer, I don't know, there's a role for the immaterial. Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Even once you establish that, people then tend to fall into a modern, another modern error, which is that the, the spiritual part is separate from the physical part. They're really not, though. You know, that's kind of Descartes or something. Yeah, yeah. You split that, or, you know, my true self is the spiritual and the body is just kind of a husk. Well, of course, Gnosticism, that was the whole, you know, he's part of that, yeah. And that crops up throughout history, from antiquity, crops up again in the Middle Ages as Albigencianism, which says the body is evil and we should discard it, basically. And, and it crops up in the, in the transgender ideology, which says the body doesn't matter at all and we can chop it up, but your true self is immaterial. But neither of those

• 16:56Speaker 01

  are real. The materialists are wrong when they deny the spirit and the spirit, the Gnostics are wrong when they deny the body. It's, it's both of those things together. And it reminds me of this line from Chesterton, another great quotable. He's, he's a little, I don't know, more whimsical than Thomas Aquinas say. But, but he has this line where he describes the importance of the mystic. And he says, you know, "The most practical thing to be is a mystic." Yeah. "We think that's the least practical thing to be. It's actually the most practical." And men throughout history have been sane precisely because men have been mystics.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Why is it the most practical to be a mystic? Well, one, because you're gonna die someday. So to have your mind on final things is not just, I don't know, a kind of soft consolation or some woo-woo abstraction. It's very practical. You're gonna die. What does that mean for you? What happens afterward?

• 17:52Josh Axe?

  Hey, can I tell? I love this so much because one of the, I think this is a principle that you're talking about here. And that is, I can tell you from the world of whether it's medicine or business or anything else, there's these studies and you've seen this study before. There's a study called the marshmallow study where you know, you put two marshmallows in front of a kid. If they can wait 10 minutes, you know, they get another, or they get a second one if you just have the one there. And it's basically this thing of delayed gratification. The longer you can wait, the further you can think out. If you're gonna have a 25-year plan even rather than a one-year plan, you're gonna be more successful. And this is why Jesus is saying, you know, think eternal, right? This sort of eternal thinking. And so anyways, that's what I'm picking up here is your greatest level of success happens with eternal thinking.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yes, and even that, you know, we should be clear. In the moment, it feels like you are undermining your interests now for some gain in the future. And there's a little bit of that going on, I guess. That's certainly how the atheists kind of mock Christians and other religious people. They say, oh, you know, you've got this heaven in the sky, but we want heaven right here. We want to build it right. You're immiserating yourself today for some future that we don't even think exists. But it's actually deeper than that. Yes, if in the moment I have the shots of tequila for breakfast, I might have a fun morning. If I cheat on my wife and sleep with my secretary, I might feel enjoyable for some brief period of time.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  If I engage in any kind of vices, that's the case. If I punch the guy that's driving me crazy, whatever.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  That will actually immiserate me now.

• 19:32Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  When you engage in vice, that actually makes you miserable now. Getting back to what we were talking about earlier with Aristotle. You know, he, he points out that there are, I'm paraphrasing a little bit from the ethics. There are four kinds of people, four states of being. There is the vicious, which is where, you know, you do all the bad stuff and man, you just love doing that bad stuff and you just keep doing it. And then there are the incontinent, the people who love doing the bad stuff. They know they shouldn't, they kind of try not to, but they do it anyway. Then there are the continent. Those are the people who really want to do the bad stuff. They know they shouldn't and they mostly don't. And I think most people think that's the whole story. The Aristotle tells us there's a fourth category and that is the virtuous people. And you know, maybe some people, we're all kind of in the middle of it.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  But there's this fourth category, virtuous people, which is when you cultivate habits of virtue,

• 20:24Speaker 01

  sinning is less attractive. It, it is more clearly making you unhappy in the moment. And doing good things actually pleases you in the moment. And you actually can condition yourself with God's grace. By the way, that's a crucial aspect of it that Aristotle doesn't totally get. Christianity, you know, brings that in. But with God's grace, you can actually arrive at a place sanctity, which is, which is where you're not even delaying gratification or you're not even turning away a present good for a future good. It's all good. And it's this classic Christian line, which is that all the way to heaven is heaven.

• 21:05Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  And we can say all the way to hell is hell.

• 21:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah. It's so, so good. You know, I think about this and this might, I don't think this is a reach, but you know, when I was younger, I grew up, my, my grandparents had a, had like a swim park. And it's always like the dream for a kid. And I got endless amounts of candy bars and soda and just junk food. And, and I really liked that food. But now that I've eaten the way I've eaten for so long, I really only crave things that tend to be healthy. Like for me, going out like Taco Bell, McDonald, that sounds. Gross to me and I think I take a bite, I would be like, this is, this is terrible. It's not good.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:46Josh Axe?

  So over time, I've just, what I've come to desire and love is, is, is good. Is it things that are good? And I think it's a very similar thing. The more you do what's good, the more you crave what's good.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this, I mean, you see this in scripture. You see this in great art. I mean, Dante, basically all of Dante is about this idea that it's our loves. It's our, our loves and our desires that, that lead us and love is central. You know, without love, we've got nothing. And you know, you're, you're in a way kind of defined by what you love and you can, you can change it. I mean, I know we live in the age where whenever people engage in vice, it's said to be immutable and you can't do anything about it.

• 22:26Josh Axe?

  I just fell in love. I couldn't help it.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  I fell in love.

• 22:28Josh Axe?

  There's nothing I could do.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  You know, Dante has a whole canto about this, falling in love in this lustful way. And it's Paulo and Francesca who are, who are being whipped around on winds. They have no discipline. They have no control. They have no agency. They're being whipped around on winds of lust in hell and it, it destroys them. But we, we don't have to do that actually. But, but this gets us to, we've, we've covered the mistaken conception of what a human being is, which is where a lot of the errors come from. But it's also a mistaken conception of what freedom is. And you see this especially on the left, but even on the right, there's this very modern idea that freedom is neutrality in choosing.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  If, if you are totally neutral, choosing between the Big Mac and the

• 23:16Josh Axe?

  Grass fed burger with avocado.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Right, yes, yeah. Or sirloin, whatever.

• 23:19Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  If you're totally neutral, well, you're free, but you're not neutral, are you? You're not really. You really don't want that, the McDonald's burger. You actually do want the healthier burger. So are you less free than the person who is less disciplined in his health? I don't think so. The more classical and Christian conception of freedom is that freedom is not neutrality in choosing, but rather it is willing.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Which is predicated upon knowledge. And that sounds a little complicated, but it's not really. It's your desire and your control over your desire based on what you know.

• 24:00Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  This is why people who have no self-control are not free. This is why crack addicts are not free in any meaningful sense. This is why children are not free and we don't let them vote yet, probably will soon. And we have an age of consent. We don't let them make big decisions on their own. We don't do that because they don't know enough.

• 24:18Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  And they don't have self-control. So if we grant those premises, then we have to seriously reconsider freedom. And I think we should return to the more classical view. And the proof that that is the sturdier definition of freedom is, according to the modern view, where it's all just you do you neutrality and whatever, you know, don't yuck my yum. According to that view, we are more free than God because God can't sin. He cannot sin in his very being. He can't sin, but I can sin.

• 24:47Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  So I can do something that God cannot do. Therefore, I'm more free than God, right? I don't think I'm more free than God. God, however, has omnipotent willing and omniscience, total knowledge. That is the only definition of freedom that makes any sense. And I think it is from that error in how we think of freedom that we have gone seriously astray personally and socially.

• 25:12Josh Axe?

  You know, I had a mentor who said this once. We were talking about discipline and he used to kind of use this line of, you know, only those who are disciplined enough to play an instrument have the freedom to play.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:26Josh Axe?

  Sort of this sort of idea. And I love that. I love that.

• 25:37Josh Axe?

  But I just can't prove it, then this is for you. Now, you might be eating clean, even what you feel like is perfect, working out, taking all of the right supplements, but you're still exhausted, still foggy, gaining weight, and you're not sleeping. And every time you ask for help, you hear the same thing, but your labs are normal. Here's what that actually means. Standard blood work only shows what's in your blood, not whether your cells can actually access it or not. You can give your body all the right inputs, but if your cells are in danger mode, chronically stressed or inflamed, they can't absorb or use those nutrients properly. If you're finally ready to heal, go to mybloodwork.com.

• 26:19Josh Axe?

  You'll get an at-home cellular blood work panel shipped straight to your home and reviewed on a private call with one of my senior health advisors at the Health Institute. And this will help you finally connect the dots between your symptoms at the cellular level. We'll also determine if you're a good candidate for one of our cellular healing protocols, so you can finally experience lasting healing. Once again, go to mybloodwork.com to check it out.

• 26:48Josh Axe?

  I want to, I want to switch the conversation a little bit and dive into some things I'm really interested to get your take on. You know, I, I'm a Protestant, you're a Catholic.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  For now, we still have what, 20 minutes left?

• 26:59Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah. So one of the things I always really appreciated about the Catholic Church, that I really feel like the Protestant Church, through the baby out with the bathwater on, is, is sort of the vigilance and the reverence and the discipline of doing the sacraments and the rituals. You know, I've found for myself that confessing regularly is so humbling and it brings me closer to God. You know, one of the things I've been so impressed with lately is I've loved watching Russell Brand's story, his conversion. And it's been so amazing. And, you know, I think anytime I've had a chance to witness to people and share my faith and see some, some of them, which is so amazing.

• 27:47Josh Axe?

  Follow Christ, most of those people were at a point in their life, or a lot of them, where they were just at the bottom, you know, and they were, they were in the state of, it's like when you're at the bottom, the only place you can look is up and when you see one, it's that sort of idea. But that's, I think there's something there with confession too, to where when you're confessing your sins unto the Lord, it's humbling, it puts you in a state of surrender. You also realize I can't do it on my own. I'm, I've got faults. And, and that's something today that I don't think many Protestants practice like they should. And it's something I would like to do more, but, but I'd like to start there to hear kind of your thoughts on, on confession. And even Martin Luther, like, I, you know, when I read, Eric Metaxas wrote a great biography on Martin Luther, and, and he's confessing constantly.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I know. He, you know, Luther suffered from scrupulosity, which most people do not have scrupulat-, most people could use a little scrupulosity today. But that's, you know, a kind of obsession with your sins, which is bad. You don't want to fall into that either. But, but all that to say, yes, he took confession so seriously, he actually fell into scrupulosity. It's like that scene in Hail Caesar, where, you know, the, the main character goes into confession, what, twice a day. The priest says, hey, my child, please, you know, give it a few days, right? And, but I, I love that you hit on confession, because to me, confession is very, very important. I'm due for one, actually. And, but I didn't go for years and years when I was away from the church. Even when I returned, I didn't really remember how to confess. Maybe I

• 29:13Speaker 01

  never learned it properly in the first place. And it's so crucial, because on this point of, you know, comparing the religions, some Protestant traditions do still have versions of confession and other sacraments. But, you know, I could sit here for many, many hours and describe the litany of problems in the Catholic Church, going back to the first century, actually, but, you know, it's including modernity. I could stay here for years and years. And I could talk about all the great Protestant preachers that even that still are around, and the great Protestant writers, and all of the great points that they've made that actually were taken seriously by the Church and all this stuff. But where the rubber meets the road, for me, one of the main places is sacramental theology, because of everything we've just been talking about.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  If the body really matters, and the spirit also really matters, and the two cannot be separated, it seems to me we need a sacramental theology. Because you can't just do religion in your head. You can't just close your eyes and do religion because you're still in time and space. You can't do religion without images because even when you close your eyes, you're seeing some image on the back of your eyelids. Because we communicate, we're not the angels. The angels communicate instantly. We are embodied, so we have to use sounds and symbols and things to communicate with each other, just like we were talking to at the top. So we need these sacraments. And so what is confession? I think a lot of people misunderstand this. Can I confess my sins to God directly? Yes, I can.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  I did it a couple nights ago. I can say and act of it. Now, I'm not sure that I have perfect contrition. This is one of the reasons that I think in Scripture, our Lord gives the faculty of confession to the apostles. He says, "Who sins you forgive or forgiven? Who sins you retain or retained?" It's scary, you know, that there's that kind of authority. But I confess my sins to God pretty frequently. So then why do I go to a guy in a box? Why do I go to... Because I'm a body too. And well, one, because I think our Lord tells us to. But even beyond that, because I'm a body. And my view of confession, and the traditional view of confession, is that it's one of the meeting points of heaven and earth. It's one of the meeting points of the material and the immaterial.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yes, I get on my knees in a real box and I say out loud, I say my sins in number and kind. I did this that many times. And here's why this was worse, and here's that. And then a priest says to me, speaking in the person of Christ, "I absolve you of your sins." Now, it's not just him as a man forgiving. It's God forgiving me through the priest. But he says that to me. And hearing those words from the priest, who I believe has authority to forgive and to retain. Does something to me. I feel, not just psychologically, obviously, there's a psychological aspect, but I think something spiritually has taken place. This is what a sacrament is. When our Lord says in John, Chapter 6, you know, "My flesh is true food, my blood

• 32:08Speaker 01

  is true drink. You have to gnaw on the flesh of the Son of Man, or you have no life in you." This scandalizes people. A lot of them go away, and they dispute among themselves. And then he turns to Peter, he says, "You don't go away. Why don't you go away?" And he says, "Well, Lord, to whom shall I go?"

• 32:24Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  "To whom shall I go?" And he says, "Well, who am I?" He says, "You're the Christ, the chosen of God." He says, "No man revealed this to you. My Father revealed this to you." Why do we have to gnaw on his flesh? Which then, you know, Catholics and more traditional Protestants believe is instituted as the Holy Communion of the Last Supper.

• 32:40Josh Axe?

  The Eucharist.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  The Eucharist. Why? This is so scandalous to people. It seems like nonsense to the Greeks. It's scandalous to the Jews. Why does everyone think this is so crazy? Because you're taking the greatest abstraction possible. God, immaterial, seemingly impossible to reach, and you're bringing him into your body. But of course, God comes down into our world as a little baby in a manger. That is scandalous to us. And so it just seems to me, to kind of pull it back to earth for a moment, I guess we've been on earth the whole time. I guess that's the whole point of sacramental theology. But to put it in basic terms, if I really

• 33:21Speaker 01

  am body and soul, material and immaterial, it would seem to me that as part of my religion, I need, for my spiritual nourishment and for my bodily nourishment, I need that meeting place of the two.

• 33:35Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Only one. Look, I do things that are, in my day to day life, I do things that are basically purely physical, and I do things that are purely intellectual, say, but I need that meeting point of the two. That's maybe more of a philosophical approach to sacramental theology.

• 33:51Josh Axe?

  Yeah. You know, one of the things, I guess, I've always I don't want to share with you why I have remained Protestant. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is that one of the things I generally, and I feel like I, you know, and everybody probably feels this about themselves. Maybe there's a level of discernment with this, but you know, what I, and let me just use my mom and grandmother, for example, you know, one of the things I really saw in my mom and her Protestant faith was it was very relationship driven.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Josh Axe?

  Like, like with, and you've heard this before. We've all, this is part of, you know, probably your regular Protestant Catholic conversations, but it was very relational, it was very pouring her heart out to God. It was very, it was very warm and personal.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:33Josh Axe?

  Well, my, my grandmother, I feel like it was, it was colder. It wasn't as personal. And so the way that I, you know, I was talking to somebody about it the other day. I was, I was explaining it like this. I said, I feel like, like Chelsea and I have a better marriage when we go on date nights.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:49Josh Axe?

  But if the date night itself, the practice, the ritual of going on a date night is the thing.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:55Josh Axe?

  It doesn't lead to the best marriage. If it's, I love my wife, I'm pursuing her like Christ loves the church. Like it's a relationship thing and it's driven by me thinking, okay, well, who are other people that have great relationships? Oh, these people, what do they all do? They all go on date nights regularly with their spouse. That's a practice. It's a ritual. It, it, it's putting things in the right order. And I think, and I think this is hard because some people get pulled in the thing of, I'm going to confess, I'm going to do the rosary, I'm going to do this thing.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I'm checking the boxes.

• 35:24Josh Axe?

  Yeah, the practice becomes more important than the person.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:28Josh Axe?

  And that's the rub I see sometime because I, because I so appreciate the Catholic disciplines and what they're doing. And I think Protestants are missing out because they're not doing them.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:39Josh Axe?

  But then sometimes I feel like in Catholicism, what I found with a lot of people growing up was it was, there was this disorder.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Yes, just checking the box, going along with the ritual, whatever. Yes.

• 35:49Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  I think the, the fact that you mentioned marriage here, I think is the perfect way to think about this because, well, one, it's a symbol of Christ and his church, the bridegroom and the bride. But two, what, what we're talking about here is a formal kind of behavior. And a personal kind of behavior. And I think these are two things that could be taken to extremes to damnable ends.

• 36:14Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  So on the, the way the Catholics can err, and actually, this is a good way for, because actually, a lot of Catholics don't pray their rosary and don't go to mass all the time, you know, in a way, I kind of wish they would at least do the formal stuff.

• 36:26Josh Axe?

  Well, I know plenty of my friends from, you know, Catholics from college.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, but that's the way Catholics can err is, is they say, okay, well, I went to church on Sunday, I received the Holy Eucharist, maybe they went to confession, maybe they didn't, they should go to confession if they're going to receive communion, and maybe I said my daily prayer, maybe, okay, check, check, check, all good, three Our Fathers, three Hymn Marys, all right, we're good. Well, okay, is that it? The way that some Protestants can err, and again, Protestantism is such a huge category that there's a liturgical tradition, there's a high church, low church, but let's say what we're talking about here, more low church, evangelical.

• 37:05Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Personalist Protestantism. The way that they can err is to make it all personal, even to the point of being individual, to say, well, it's just, you know, I'm just talking to God in my head.

• 37:17Josh Axe?

  Well, this is why Protestantism right now is so fractured, is because what, what happens? Now there's thousands of denominations to, and by the way, because the next thing I want to ask you is, this year is the first year, I believe, or last year was the first year, that Catholicism in a long time started outgrowing Protestantism.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:39Josh Axe?

  Right?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Miracles abound.

• 37:40Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Well, I think that relates to the final point on the marriage analogy.

• 37:47Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Which is, if your marriage were purely going through the rituals, you don't talk to your wife, you don't, you don't sleep with your wife, you don't have dinner with your wife, you know, you're married on paper, you live under the same roof maybe, but that's it, it's only formal. It's not a great marriage, is it? But then think on the other side, the hippie side. You know, you're not, you're not married. Marriage is just a piece of paper, man. Me and my girlfriend, we don't need a piece of paper. It's free love, you know? We just, we know we have this thing together. We don't need, we don't need to follow the rules. We don't need to, you know, make the, we don't need to celebrate holidays together. We just, we're just, it's all personal and passionate.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Well, that would be a kind of an error too. One is the error of the frigid wasp. One is the error of the hippie, but they're both errors. And so it seems to me what we need is a via media, which, which I think is really what the faith calls for, which is, you know, you, you have to know Christ intimately and personally. And the liturgy and the sacraments should actually help you to do that. If you go to Eucharistic adoration, what that should be is the most personal relationship you could possibly have with Christ, because you believe, and I think you're right, that he is physically, literally there, right in front of you. And then you physically, literally eat him.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  And he is the food, unlike all the other foods that just break down and become part of you, he's the food that makes you more like him and incorporates you into the body of Christ. These two errors, and, and this gets into your follow-up question, which is, how on earth is Catholicism jumping up again? That's kind of odd, isn't it? I think part of this is because of an excess of individualism.

• 39:37Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  And I think this coincides with the apotheosis of private judgment in the transgender ideology. But I think people are beginning to recognize that our stock of reason is relatively small. We sometimes go wrong. If all we have to go on is private judgment, we can't really have a society, because someone's got to decide things, right? You know, the rules and adjudicate disputes and things like that. And we recognize that we're not, to quote that great philosopher Kamala Harris, "We didn't just fall out of a coconut tree," you know? I know, she said at least one right thing in her life. And we're born into society, and actually, it's a matter of the natural law that man is ordered to live in society.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  We are inclined to live in a society, and specifically in an ordered society. So, we kind of need each other. And there is a...

• 40:31Speaker 01

  A recognition here that there is some order in the Catholic Church. Now, you know, there's some disorder too, you know, I mean, this is a fallen world.

• 40:38Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  This is a human institution. But that there is, there's order, that there are some rules that, that are not the totality of the faith by any means. But, you know, when, when I examine my conscience, when I'm going to confession, I say, okay, did I, I go through the 10 commandments and all, did I do this, did I say this, did I go through? Sin, my priest, a priest friend of mine, made this point once. Sin is not just like, did you break this rule or that rule or did you? The, the rules are guideposts to help us to stay on the road of a relationship of grace. But it's a relationship of grace that God offers to us. And so those rules that just kind of keep us on that road.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  And I think there's a recognition in a society that is increasingly disordered and incomprehensible and insensible, that actually maybe there is some authority, maybe we can actually know things, maybe there are behaviors that are better and worse than others. And maybe that would be conducive to our flourishing if we all tried to do that, you know? We're a very deracinated society. We try to cut off our roots. We live after the age of revolutions and we're, we're asked these basic questions now. What is a, what is a woman? What is a man? What is this? And I think even just on a sociological or historical level, people are looking back a little further than 20 or 30 years ago now.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  And they're saying, well, hold on, what are the roots?

• 42:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Of my civilization, of my understanding of myself and even of my faith. I think that's very attractive to people. Again, we could be here for many, many hours talking about all of the problems in the Catholic Church. I mean, no way suggesting that this institution doesn't have problems. It's a, you know, it's a, it's a fallen world. But given where we are, I, I get why that's very attractive to people. It was attractive to me when I reverted.

• 42:34Josh Axe?

  Yeah, well, you know, the, the thing that I think about too is, is I think that people...

• 42:42Josh Axe?

  Let me just say something I appreciate, and this is true both about maybe some of the more classic Protestant denominations and Catholicism is when I walk into a service, oftentimes there's a greater level of reverence.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:59Josh Axe?

  Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, there's because I think sometimes, you know, we have a lot of these non-denominational churches and it's become so much about entertainment. And when you're living in a church where one of the main goals is to entertain and please people versus getting a state on your knees and live in reverence to God, it's a different, there's a different connection and a different thing happening there. And there's something about me, I mean, when I think about the most euphoric feeling I can have, one of the most euphoric feelings, it's on my knees, looking up and just being in a state of reverence. And that's a feeling I get. And it's the same thing singing old hymns, you know, and things like that. There's more of, I think more of that happening.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Yes, without question. Even you have to get down to the fundamental question of what the church service is. And here, I think there's a lot of confusion. This is really where Catholics and Protestants talk past each other because the Protestants will point out Protestants have a better recall of most of the Bible than Catholics do.

• 43:59Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Chapter and verse, they're better at.

• 44:01Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  A friend of mine, Scott Han, who was a Presbyterian minister. Yeah, Scott, yeah. Scott is like, this is his mission in life is to get Catholics to be able to like cite the Bible better and be more familiar with it. Because Catholics, we should read our Bible anyway. Father Mike Schmidt said that Bible in Your podcast, but we tend to read the Bible liturgically. So we, you know, we're reading in mass from the Old Testament, from the hymns, from the New Testament, the epistles, but you know, you don't always, you don't remember where was this, where was that? Because it's being read as this integral whole.

• 44:30Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  And I think one of the ways that the Protestants have really excelled at this is the church service is treated primarily as a Bible study, as a didactic exercise. You get out, you know, you get your John McCarthers out there and they open up the Bible and they are drilling down into their exegesis of the Bible.

• 44:49Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  And you're, and you in the pews or in the chairs are opening up your Bible and you're going through it. That is fundamentally not what the Mass is. There are Catholic Bible studies, there are all sorts of things, but that's not what the Mass is. The Mass is not a teaching exercise primarily. The Mass is an act of worship. The centerpiece of the Mass is the Holy Eucharist, is the sacrament. And so you need both. I'm not saying that you should only have one or the other. The analogy, I think, in the Old Testament is the analogy of the temple and the synagogue. The temple is where sacrifice takes place. The synagogue is where teaching happens. You need to be taught, but you also need to sacrifice. You also need worship and reverence.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  And that, I think, that's one place where it's really comparing apples and oranges. And you want both. You want your Bible study and you want your worship.

• 45:39Josh Axe?

  I'll say even Protestants aren't as good as they used to be at this because I don't know that churches have Sunday School anymore. I used to always go to two services. There's not a day in my life, well, a Sunday in my life, I didn't. So I was like, you went to church? You went to Sunday School?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:52Josh Axe?

  So I think that that's happening less. And of course Biblical literacy rates are, you know, it's

• 45:57Speaker 01

  There was, I remember Leon Cass, who's a great Jewish humanist at UChicago. He's like 1,000 years old now, but he might, he might still be teaching, for all I know, on the Committee on Social Thought. He said, brilliant, I mean, he was like a medical doctor and had a zillion degrees and everything, and very familiar with the Bible, though he approached it from a more humanist lens. And wrote a, wrote an interesting book on it called The Beginning of Wisdom, on the Book of Genesis. And Cass said that over his years teaching, this is going back into the 90s, 2000s. He said, "Every year, the Biblical literacy was declining, to the point that students didn't know who Noah was."

• 46:37Josh Axe?

  Yeah. I mean, Jordan Peterson, I watched a lecture by him and he was like, you know, my first 10 years of teaching, 80% of people knew the Biblical stories, like Jonah. And he said, "My last?" Eighty percent didn't know them.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:50Josh Axe?

  It's, it is, yeah, it's, it's crazy. You, you know, my favorite priest to listen to regularly, I know you know him, you've probably had him on your show. I love Bishop Barron.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I love Bishop Barron.

• 46:59Josh Axe?

  I'm a huge fan. In fact, I was watching him yesterday morning. I watch him constantly. I've consumed so much of his content and he's one of the best teachers I've, I've seen.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  The way you know that he's extremely intelligent and intellectual is he speaks simply.

• 47:13Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  You know, because he can. He's able to convey these extraordinarily complex ideas in really simple terms. He's such a generous, you know, kind man.

• 47:23Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  And, but he's firm, you know, that guy, he knows what he believes and he's done an amazing job in, in apologetics. A wonderful preacher. It's kind of funny that, you know, in our modern age, one of the great stalwart, like true tough guy defenders of the faith also happens to be nice.

• 47:41Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  You don't always expect that, but it's, uh, it's crucial. And, you know, even your point on Jordan, Jordan's actually done a very good job of that in his own kind of oddball way. But for a lot of people, after the new atheism, which was a fad in the 2000s and that was basically just the 2000s. Now, there's a lot of people who will even come to me and they'll say, look, okay, I want to believe. But how do I believe? I want to believe, but I can't.

• 48:09Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  And this, I think, brings us back to what really everything we've been talking about. The body, the relationship of the body to the mind. And it's, and the relationship of worship to teaching, which is, is a great Latin expression. Lex erandi, lex credendi. The way you worship, the law of worship is the law of belief. So people sometimes in the modern world, they set it up as this dichotomy. Well, look, I really believe, I close my eyes, I think really hard and I really, that's how I believe. And other people say, no, we need more liturgical forms of worship.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  It is precisely by putting your body into, it's precisely by getting on your knees when you pray versus sitting back on the couch. And I do sit back on the couch and pray. But when you get on your knees and pray, that's not an empty act. You are, in your body, telling your mind something. When you kneel before the Blessed Sacrament, rather than just walk up to it like you're talking to Joe Blow and smacking him on the back, you are telling yourself something in your body that then you come to believe more and more deeply. This is specifically a Catholic issue, but after the Second Vatican Council, there was a reform of the Mass, which introduced all sorts of deformations that actually contradicted the Second Vatican Council, and there were a lot of problems that followed from it. One

• 49:29Speaker 01

  of the big changes was, the priest turned away from facing the altar to face the congregation. And it gets to exactly what you were talking about, which is, well, hold on, what am I going to church for? Am I going to church to be entertained? Or am I going to church to worship God? If I'm going to church to be entertained, I see why the preacher and the pastor is facing me and telling stories to me and doing whatever. If I'm there to worship God, shouldn't the pastor be leading me like a general would lead his troops, like a pilot would fly the airplane? You don't want the pilot facing into coach. You want the pilot leading the airplane. Shouldn't we all together be facing God, either a kind

• 50:10Speaker 01

  of symbolic representation of God, or as I believe, like literally God on the altar? That mere turn tells me something, and it will affect the way that I believe, whether or not I do believe, in fact.

• 50:24Josh Axe?

  Well, how about this? You know, when you listen to music today that is Christian, the word "I" is always used. Historically, it was always "we." I mean, that, you know, to your point there. Well, I want to ask you about, I've got so many other things I want to ask you about, because I want to dive more into some of the...

• 50:46Josh Axe?

  The rituals that I think are so beneficial for our health too, our spiritual health, our physical health. Let's talk about fasting.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:55Josh Axe?

  What do you think?

• 50:56Speaker 01

  This was something, when I was a kid, I didn't have to do it because kids generally don't fast. And then when I was older, and I should have done it, I was an atheist. And so when I returned to the church in my twenties, I said, I guess I'm supposed to fast, aren't I? I remember the first time I did it, I fasted, it was probably Good Friday or Ash Wednesday or something. And I was shocked. I didn't know if I could do it. Human beings have been fasting for many, many years. And I said, can I do it? A healthy 25 year old, whatever. And it was shocking. At midnight at 12:01, I think I ate a half a lasagna or something. But I did it. I made it through my fast. And then it's much easier to fast, by the way. Once you do it once or twice, it's pretty easy. And it's clearly

• 51:37Speaker 01

  beneficial. It clears your mind. Traditionally, fasting was understood as one of the remedies for lust. The different sins that call for different practical remedies. There's a great practical spiritual guide to this from, I think, the 16th century by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli. It's called The Spiritual Combat. It just says, oh yeah, when you face this temptation, you do this, you know, you do this. It's very practical stuff. And fasting really helps you with that. It turns your mind back to spiritual goods, which all of us turn away from. We just are, Thomas Aquinas says that the two vices that most screw us up and lead us to despair are sloth, first of all, and lust. And the reason is, lust

• 52:19Speaker 01

  in particular, because lust turns us to material goods. And so when you're focused on material goods, especially, I guess you could say gluttony is that way too, but lust is more exciting. When you're focused on those material goods, you're necessarily not focused on spiritual goods. Well, when you don't eat for a day, or two days.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Your mind is on spiritual goods. So then you realize, okay, fasting can be a very good thing. And the final realization I had was fasting is actually necessary, I think, for most of your life. I think it's necessary. Just like every so often, I need the meeting of heaven and earth. I need the meeting of the material and the immaterial.

• 52:58Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Every so often, I need a little reset to remind myself in my actions that I'm not just my body.

• 53:05Josh Axe?

  You know, there are some incredible things that happen physically when you fast. There's a process called autophagy where your body literally takes dead cells, cancer cells as well, and just cleans them out. So your body is most cleansing and detoxifying when you're fasting, by far. And I think it's a very similar thing spiritually. There are things that are stuck in your mind. There are, there are, there's this debris and this clutter, and it's removed when you're fasting. And I think when, anytime I fast, there's been a greater level of, I just felt like, um, just clarity.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:36Josh Axe?

  You know, and I think that's important. That's important today because there's so much noise coming in from everywhere, spiritually, mentally. I mean, just, you know, I think that one of the, if I, if I could pinpoint, you know, there's, the master hormone in our body is cortisol. And cortisol affects insulin, affects estrogen, affects testosterone, either positively or negatively. And most people are living in this state of high cortisol, fight or flight constantly. And when you're living in that state, you just can't think clearly. You're over, it's like the, the parable of the soil where like the weeds are coming up and choking off the thing. And I think that's, you know, that's a, that's a, and fasting is the, is a cure for that.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Yes, I find, I often go to my grandmother, my aged grandmother, who maybe I still say she's 29, but she's in her 90s now. I go there for Easter, and I'll be sitting at my aunt's condo, sitting out looking at the beach on Good Friday. So I haven't eaten, basically, or eaten very little for the day. And by the end of the evening, I'll sometimes sit out with a book, sometimes I'll just look at the stars in the ocean. I'll often smoke a cigar. There's no calories. Maybe that's cheating, I don't know, but I don't. And I will have a clarity about the world, my life, our place in the cosmos, that is rare. It's so, it's so rare, in fact, that it sticks out as one of the clearest points

• 54:59Speaker 01

  of my whole year. And all it took was for me to put the cupcake down for a few hours on one day. Not so hard.

• 55:05Josh Axe?

  Yeah, I love it.

• 55:09Josh Axe?

  If you want practical, science-backed guidance for living a healthier, longer, more vibrant life, you need to check out the Biohackett Podcast. It is hosted by my good friend Aman Hassan, and it brings a thoughtful, compassionate perspective to wellness that so many women have been looking for. Every week, Aman breaks down the latest research in longevity, hormones, and metabolic health in a way that's clear and easy to understand, leads to important conversations around women's health, fertility, and the steps women can take to protect their energy, balance their hormones, and support long-term well-being. She talks with top doctors, scientists, and health experts about natural healing, nutrition, lifestyle choices that make a real difference, and sits down with entrepreneurs and thought leaders to explore

• 55:54Josh Axe?

  how they stay strong, grounded, and resilient in their personal lives and their work. If you want a show that speaks directly to health challenges women are navigating today while offering hope, clarity, and real solutions, tune into Biohackett every Thursday, wherever you listen to podcasts. It is one of the most educational and uplifting shows in the wellness space, and I think you're going to love it.

• 56:19Josh Axe?

  Yeah, and so this leads me into a couple other things. You know, in terms of resting from the busyness Sabbath, I'm curious, what is the Catholic viewpoint of Sabbath?

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Well, this is something that I violate.

• 56:32Josh Axe?

  Because in Protestant, I mean, it's kind of all over, you know, in terms of the beliefs.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Well, like all modern teaching and everything, it's all a little bit confused, but historically, it's not confused. You are not to do work on the Lord's day. You're not to do work. Now, I cheat it sometimes, because in a very Jesuitical way, I cheat it, because I've heard it explained as specifically pertaining to physical labor. I'm not really much one for physical labor, so I don't, I, that doesn't, you know, I'm more

• 57:02Josh Axe?

  Man, I feel like that's cut the corner, but you know.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  It seems like it's cheating a little bit. And, and so I've tried to avoid that.

• 57:08Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  But traditionally, it means you don't buy and sell unnecessarily on, on Sundays.

• 57:13Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Used to be stores were closed on Sunday, not just liquor stores, but like all stores.

• 57:17Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Uh, so it was easier to do that. Uh, now I do buy and sell a little bit. I'll go to lunch sometimes and maybe I shouldn't. But the view is, no, you, this is really a day of not just rest for yourself, but to specifically to contemplate spiritual things. And you need that. Buddy of mine, Ben Shapiro, uh, not Christian yet, though we're working on it. But, you know, he takes the, the Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath very seriously. And we'll say he would shabounce out of the office, you know, before evening on Fridays. And there's that line from, I forget which rabbi it was, who said, uh, more than Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews. This ritual has distinguished the Jews from other

• 58:00Speaker 01

  people and kept the Jews as a, as a nation. And Ben takes it very seriously. And Ben is constantly doing a million different things and he needs it. I think I would have burned out years ago had he not forced this 24 hour period. Sometimes I'll forget, I'll call him after sundown or around that time. No, his phone is out. It's in like a locker or something. And then I know when the Sabbath is over because sometimes, you know, that's when the phone call comes in and he's back to working immediately afterward. But he takes it very seriously. And, and we could learn a thing or two from the Jews on this, uh, Catholic and Protestant alike. There's a reason that God tells us to keep the Sabbath, which, you know, uh, for the Jews is Saturday, but for the Christians, you know, because

• 58:44Speaker 01

  of the resurrection is fulfilled in Sunday. Uh, doesn't mean that we should, uh, we get a free pass to go do work. I mean, you're, just your quotidian life will be much worse if you, if you don't take a break. I think we've all experienced that at some point.

• 58:59Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, the, the other thing I think about is I think there's a lot of things in the Bible when we get to the New Testament. And there's this, I, there's this, I think. Think truth, but also interpreting that truth is important that, hey, the law has passed away. Okay, well, when it comes to things like tithing or the Sabbath, okay, 10%, is that, are you supposed to give less than that now? Are you supposed to give whatever you feel? Or is that kind of just the lower standard and he's saying, no, like, go beyond. You know, like, I'm not going to just say, just focus on the number. Be close to me, listen to me and see what I'm telling you to give in abundance. And so I think, I think there's a similar thing there with the Sabbath that, that Christians, that Protestants and Catholics to a degree that maybe put less importance than they did maybe

• 59:44Josh Axe?

  a long time ago, in terms of just saying.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Even 50 years ago, yeah.

• 59:47Josh Axe?

  Yeah, just, just the importance of a, of a Sabbath to, we are, we are neurologically created to rest and take a day and just do nothing.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Yes, and even when we say, you know, the laws are no longer in effect. I mean, St. Paul, first of all, tells us, the law is there to show us our sin. That's what the law is. So the law is, it doesn't save us. The law is there to show us how much we need grace and to actually impel us and point us toward grace. So, you know, this is how the Old Testament figures the New Testament. And it points us, it all points toward Christ. So even when we say, well, you know, we don't need to avoid shellfish or something anymore. Yeah, I think that's true.

• 1:00:27Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Maybe you still avoid shellfish.

• 1:00:28Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah, I don't eat pork or shellfish. I think they're, and this is, so this is my, they are carriers of toxins. Like pork is where predominantly where people get parasites. I mean, it's, it's, so the reason I say that is, I don't think we're under the law where we can't eat pork from that standpoint, but does it mean it's healthy now? Like, all of a sudden, it's like, wow, now it's this wonderful food for you.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  I'm not sure that bacon is a health food right now. Yes. And even the, for a traditional understanding of this is, there are different types of law. So we wouldn't say that, you know, the prohibition on committing murder is no longer in effect. Go out and murder.

• 1:01:03Josh Axe?

  Right, there's the civil.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  There's a civil law.

• 1:01:06Josh Axe?

  In the, in the, in the, but anyways.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Three kinds. There's the, you know, the juridical kind of law pertaining to the nation of Israel, which disperses after the collapse of the temple. And the interesting things have happened in modernity that lead into different theological views on that. But there's the juridical. Okay, well, that's over, as it was. There's the ceremonial, the liturgical law, which traditionally, we believe, is fulfilled in the priesthood. You know, and so there are-

• 1:01:38Josh Axe?

  There's that sacrificial system and Jesus was-

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, there are liturgical garments in the Old Testament with the umum and thurum and urim and thumum. And, you know, this is, we see this in the liturgical garments of the priests today. And, you know, there are lots of parallels there. But then, let's not forget about the third one. That's the moral law. The moral law is eternal. And St. Paul tells us the moral law, the natural law, is written on every human heart. We can know that through reason. So that is, that's not even transmuted in any way, other than to say, you know, it is taken to a new degree of perfection. You know, our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, gives us a dazzling, sparkling, perfect view of the moral law. And, you know, of course, the law is summed up in love, love the Lord

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  your God above all things, and love your neighbors yourself. You can't commit murder. You can't go steal. You can't go covet your neighbor's wife. The moral law, you know, is universal and for all of history. And so, these things still matter to us, obviously. And yes, to your point, there's a bare minimum on, okay, yes, we don't, for purposes of the law, we don't need to avoid shellfish and pork and everything. But what does that tell us? What does that tell us today? How is that fulfilled? How is that perfected? How are these Levitical, kind of priestly laws? How is that fulfilled today? What is, it's all just like over? It's like, oh, that was all just kind of a joke. That was just

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  prequel. That's done. But what, this is more. You know, our Lord offers us life and life abundantly. This, you know, we look ahead even, just as the Old Testament prefigures the New Testament, the New Testament is prefiguring something. The second coming and the new heaven and the new earth and the glorified body. So what are we looking forward to? What is the fulfillment and perfection of all these things?

• 1:03:26Josh Axe?

  So I have a parallel here for you with this and would love to get your thoughts on this. So I, when I, when I sit down with a patient, I can tell really early on if they're going to have a really hard time getting healthy, or if they're going to just thrive and do well. And it's based on this, I tend to get two questions from them. One group will, like for instance, I have them write down like a three day diary, what they're eating on a daily basis, and then they might share something with me like, or say something like, um, well, can I keep drinking two pots of coffee a day? Can I keep doing the bagel and cream cheese? Can I keep doing this? And it's sort of this idea of like, the question is, what can I get away with?

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:06Josh Axe?

  And then there's the other group saying-

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Can you? Sure, I guess you can.

• 1:04:08Josh Axe?

  Yeah. And the other group is like, I just want to heal, I'll do anything, I want to get healthy, I want to feel good, I get like, and those people tend to do well, because there's, and I think there's a similar thing for some people spiritually, where it's like-

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Great point.

• 1:04:21Josh Axe?

  What's the bare minimum I can do to like, be okay and check the box and go, you know, to the place upstairs versus, no, like, I want my life to be different, I want to, I want to live a life of meaning, I want to, you know, I want to be connected with, you know, God, have a real relationship there.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  You know, I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine, who, a Jewish friend, who, who said, Michael, something about Christianity really drives me crazy. If Hitler converted on his deathbed, or his death couch, I guess, when he, you know, fired the gun, if he had converted on his deathbed, he could go to heaven. And I said, well, you know, in my view of things, he'd, he'd probably needed quite a lot of purgatory in the meantime, but, uh, uh, yes, ultimately, yes, that's true.

• 1:05:03Josh Axe?

  But, but I don't actually say to him, most Jews believe that there's a purgatory as well, and so I don't know if he knows that.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, I mean, even the, there's such variety in the kind of Jewish conception of Hades, or the, you know, Shaul, the afterlife, but, but that, but the rub for him was, the injustice of it all, you know, the worst guy ever, how could he go to heaven if he converted? And I said, well, one, this is like grace, because we all, you know, in the course of justice, none of us would see salvation, but, I, I mean, yeah, it's shocking, but like, we all do bad things too, and some do more bad things than others, and some do enormously bad things more of the time, but this is, you know, the ultimate anthropological point is, we're not going to save ourselves, and God offers his grace, and we are not one to limit God's grace, first of all. But second of all, at a very practical level- I wouldn't count on the deathbed conversion.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  And this is a point, you know, we're using the most extreme example here of, you know, like Hitler or something.

• 1:05:59Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  But the people who say, well, look, I'm gonna live it up now. You know, I'm gonna have a lot of women and fast cars and rock and roll, whatever people do. And but then, I'm very smart. I'm gonna convert on my deathbed. So I'm gonna have all this fun now and I'm gonna convert best of all worlds. But the thing is, you don't. The thing is, I mean, we don't limit God's grace. You know, thank God, sometimes people do have these last moment conversions. But if you, throughout your whole life, cultivate loves that are selfish, that are contrary to God, that if you convince your beliefs therefore that are contrary to God and you just, it's kind of like a bone, you know, they harden.

• 1:06:44Josh Axe?

  And, and Yeah.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  If you're counting on that deathbed conversion, I think chances are you're, you're not gonna have one. It just, that's just not how human beings work.

• 1:06:55Josh Axe?

  Yeah. The other thing, and again, this is, I mean, this is sort of interesting theology here. But, but I think also, you know, like, when I think about the Mother Teresa's of the world, there's this amazing group that Chelsea and I give to in Kenya, and his name's Charles Mulli. He's got an unbelievable story of him and his wife, and they have adopted, like, they created an orphanage, an orphanage in Kenya and have helped, like, adopt, you know, hundreds and hundreds of kids. And it's like, you know, they're operating out of the mindset of, I'm storing it for myself treasures in heaven. It's like, what's his house gonna look like? Or his life? And what is he gonna be doing in eternity versus, you know, that person?

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  You know, one of the parables that has most troubled me, I just couldn't make heads or tails of it.

• 1:07:41Josh Axe?

  Lazarus?

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Is make friends with unrighteous mammon. Make friends with unrighteous mammon. You know, this, this deceitful steward who says, oh, shoot, I'm about to lose my job. And so I need to. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go here to all these people that owe money and hey, you owe 100, all right, now you owe 50. Hey, you, you owe 200, all right, now you owe 100. Okay, we're good. And it says, ah, that's a, that's a smart steward, because you're gonna make friends with unrighteous mammon through, by the means of unrighteous mammon, so that these people for whom you've done good will receive you into eternal dwellings. And it's, I, I, I don't know, it just for years and years, some people struggle with different, different parts of scripture. And that one, I said, what does that mean? I thought, oh,

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  well, of course. I mean, very practically, it means you should give alms, you should give to charity, because you are storing up treasures in heaven. But also, if we're part of the mystical body of Christ, and we believe that, you know, the saints in heaven in Revelation have buckets of prayers, and that you say, well, yeah, okay, here, I got this money. And money is nice. It's nice to have money. It's nice to have a house and provide food for your family. That's great. But at a certain point, like, you don't need, you don't need like five Rolexes, right? You don't need like three Ferraris at a certain point.

• 1:08:52Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Hey, you know, you know, and this gets us back to Chesterton on the mystic. The most practical thing that I can do with my money, the most practical thing, the cleverest thing, because this wicked generation, they're, they're cleverer than the sweet little doves in many ways. The most practical thing I can do with my money is give it away to charity. You know why? Because I'm gonna die. And I want to be received into eternal dwellings by the people for whom I've done some good with this unrighteous mammon that ultimately can't really profit me.

• 1:09:24Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah, that's so good. Yeah, that's right thinking. You know, I, I want to talk a little bit about healing, and I want to talk about communion.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Josh Axe?

  You know, I think there have been some people in different sort of religious circles have talked about it as the meal that heals. What are your thoughts on even that, that saying?

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great. I actually hadn't heard that saying, but I like it.

• 1:09:44Josh Axe?

  Okay.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Because the Catholic belief is that the, well, is that the Eucharist is, you know,

• 1:09:50Josh Axe?

  The body.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. Which, you know, that was kind of difficult for me, too. I think it's only like 33% of Catholics actually believe in the real presence.

• 1:10:01Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Which is so, it's just shocking and horrifying. But you kind of get it in modernity. And I actually think part of the liturgical changes are reason for that, because Lex Arandi, Lex Gridandi, because we don't receive often anymore at altar rails, kneeling on the tongue. And so, anyway, there are all sorts of reasons why I think that's true. But the traditional Catholic belief about what the Eucharist does. Is that the Eucharist forgives venial sin. So when I commit sins, John tells us that there are venial and mortal sins. You know, all sin is unrighteousness, but there are some sins which are not mortal. Those are venial sins. And that's also very interesting and ties into the fact that we can't go to heaven if

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  we're corrupt, nothing imperfect can enter into heaven. And anyway, a lot to say about that. But that means that when I commit a mortal sin, which is, you know, grave matter with full knowledge willingly, I'm like, I'm just like basically saying, screw you, God, is what I'm doing when I commit a mortal sin. Then I have to go to confession and I confess all my sins, including my venial sins. But when I commit a sin, you know, I say a cuss word. It's a venial sin. It's not, I might've even thought about doing it, but most of the time, if you say a cuss word, it's a venial sin. That the Eucharist actually heals that. It's the meal that heals. We shouldn't take this to an extreme, I think, where, you know, St.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  Paul tells us, if you receive the Holy Communion without discerning the body, you know, if you receive Holy Communion unworthily, you're eating your own damnation. Well, that's kind of scary. What is, I thought it was a meal that heals. And then I'm eating my own damnation? What does that mean? And that, I think, gets into mortal sin and how we receive and the sacraments that precede, and our confessions that precede communion. But we can go back to guys like St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, or Ignatius, who point out that the Eucharist is not, the Christians don't eat the, and this is back, you know, at the apostolic age or shortly thereafter. Oh, yeah. The Eucharist is not just ordinary bread. That's not what the Christians believe.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  They believe they're eating Christ. And so they do it. Differently.

• 1:12:18Josh Axe?

  Well, this is why, I mean, there were rumors during, to your point, that first century and those early times were that, you know, Christians were cannibals.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:27Josh Axe?

  I mean, there were, yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  But the reason it's, you're not a cannibal, there was this movie, I actually thought it was a pretty good movie, that was panned and widely seen as radically leftist, Mother. Did you see this? It was probably seven or eight years ago, I forget who made it, and there was this very graphic scene of people eating a baby, like eating a living baby, and it was, people viewed that as a mockery of the Eucharist. I viewed it as a misunderstanding of the Eucharist, to put it diplomatically, but at least an engagement with religion. I feel the whole movie is an engagement with religion from wrong premises, taken to wrong conclusions. But it's not, it's, you can understand why people would say, these Christians are cannibals. They think that they're eating the literal body and blood of Christ. In the scripture, Christ says, you're eating my blood, or drinking my blood and eating

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  my body, gnawing on my flesh. But here would be one reason why we wouldn't be cannibals. You're a cannibal when you eat dead flesh. You can't really eat living flesh, the minute you, even if the guy's walking around, you take a bite off a tribesman or something in Papua New Guinea, hum, that flesh is dead or dying flesh. Christ's body is living. He's conquered death. He's always living. So that would be one reason why it's not cannibalism. Now, the other reason is even what we mean by the transubstantiation, which we use terms from Aristotle, like substances, but most of the time, the vast majority of the time, after the consecration of the host, the Eucharist retains the appearances of bread and wine.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  So, you know, it looks like flour and water and, you know, grape juice or wine, but it is, it transubstantiated, the substance is Christ. Now, what's interesting is there are Eucharistic miracles. Some people will believe in them, some will not. What's very interesting about them, though, is this goes back all the way from antiquity to the present. Sometimes the host bleeds and they do it. Now, there are investigations into this and want to make sure it's not mold or something like that, but they found cardiac tissue in the host and it's always the same kind. It's always the same type of blood from a Middle Eastern man. And it's really weird and people are gonna hear this. Yeah, they're gonna say, what?

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  That sounds totally crazy. But, you know, look it up. It's weird. This has happened a number of times over the centuries. And then you have to ask yourself, why would this happen? Why would sometimes? Let's say you believe that that's possible, that that happened, a eucharistic miracle. Why would God allow that to happen? And why would it only happen sometimes? And I think it's because God reminds us that it's all real. And he tells us, you know, he tells Thomas, he says, listen, you have believed because you've seen. Blessed are those who have believed and not seen. But our Lord does remind us. He gives us these little glimpses, these little winks of heaven. You know, our Lord excoriates the people.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  He says, you people, you look up in the sky, you scrutinize the weather, you say the sky is red, so this will be the weather today. You can scrutinize the signs of the sky, but you don't recognize the signs of the times. And it's a wicked generation that seeks after a sign. To that generation, none will be given, none but the sign of Jonah. And of course, what is the sign of Jonah? The sign of Jonah is the resurrection, you know, three nights in the belly of the whale and in the earth and the resurrection. And so our Lord, it's this tension and it's actually a topic that fascinates me, which is, on the one hand, our Lord says, don't seek after a sign. It's a wicked generation that seeks after a sign. On the other hand, we are here in the suspended time of history. We know how the story begins.

• 1:16:08Speaker 01

  We know the turning point of history and the incarnation. We know how the story ends, though we don't know when it's going to end. In fact, no one knows, not even the son, only the father. And yet, here we are. And what are we supposed to do? We are supposed to scrutinize, not seeking the signs of the times in some occult way, but we are supposed to scrutinize the signs of the times, cooperate with God's grace, do what God wants for us to do, leading into the eschaton, you know, leading into the end times.

• 1:16:35Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  It's, uh, and, you know, for a Christian, especially Catholic, but the whole, the whole world is just full of symbols.

• 1:16:48Josh Axe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  There's symbols everywhere. And this is true, I mean, this is true of Christians, I think broadly, but especially Catholics, we really like our symbols. And the whole world is full of symbols. And so for a Christian, there can be no mere coincidence. So you say some miracle, you say, well, how could a, how could the Holy Communion, how could the Eucharist bleed sometimes? You say, I don't know, how did a guy rise from the dead?

• 1:17:08Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  I don't know, how did a guy turn water into wine? You answer me that one. If you believe that, surely you believe that the host could bleed.

• 1:17:15Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah. I, I, I will tell you, some of the most encouraging times of my life have been, well, I'll, I'll share an example. So the, uh, about three and a half years ago, I came down with this crazy, I got a spinal infection.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:17:27Josh Axe?

  And it was in my lower discs, like spread, like, like spreading. And I was in bed for a year. And there were times, I didn't know what was gonna happen. I didn't know if I was gonna walk again. And I was, uh, praying and just, I felt like it was just the lowest I'd ever been, you know, just at the absolute bottom. And there were three different times where I was, when I was probably most discouraged, I look up and I saw a rainbow. Like, one was, I was literally in the ambulance. I was about to be flown from, I was in Puerto Rico to Florida because, again, they found this on MRI. And there was this little, you know, hole in the ceiling, this little, uh, window at the top of the ambulance. And then I just look up and there's.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Josh Axe?

  And for me, that was God saying, listen.

• 1:18:12Josh Axe?

  Remember my promises, remember who I am. And I think people that go through life with looking for God speaking to them and those signs, they'll find that encouragement. And if you want to hear from God, he will speak to you. If you pursue him, you'll find, but, but for some people, that's just a rainbow.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Josh Axe?

  You know?

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yes, and the thing is, like, it's never just a rainbow.

• 1:18:34Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  It's like literally never just a rainbow, but some people refuse to interpret. But what are we to do, you know? That's, that's how we get along in the world. We, you know, we, we find ourselves in this world. We didn't ask to be here. We didn't make ourselves, despite the pretensions of political ideologies today. We didn't, we actually just, like, we just wound up here and we're trying to make sense of the place. And so, we have to make sense of the place. When people refuse to interpret, what they're, what they're saying is they're not going to play the game. But you're in the game, like, you're here, and the stakes are much higher than an ordinary game.

• 1:19:11Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  So you're just, you're eschewing your, your obligation, your duty as a human being. We're, we're called primarily to interpret. In fact, this is the story of, of our Lord visiting Martha and Mary. Our Lord goes to visit Martha and Mary, and Martha's doing everything, and she keeps up the house, and she provides the nice lunch, and she's cleaning, and she's cooking, and she's doing everything. And Mary is sitting at the feet of our Lord, listening. Martha comes in, and she says, "Hey, Lord, my sister isn't doing anything, and I'm doing everything to make this lunch, and yell at her, please." And he says, "Oh, Martha, you're troubled. You have all these troubles, and you're anxious. And your sister is sitting here contemplating, and she has the better part. It will not be taken away from her."

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  That's not, not to say they don't want lunch. No, our Lord, the first thing our Lord does when he's resurrected is proil fish for his friends, and they eat lunch, breakfast. But-

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Traditionally, these are understood as Martha. I mean, these are real people too, by the way.

• 1:20:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Martha stands for the act of life. Mary stands for the contemplative life.

• 1:20:12Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  The contemplative life is better. The Lord tells us that it is better.

• 1:20:17Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Now, we all need both because we're all bodies and we're moving in the world. We gotta eat when we're not fasting and we have to. But the contemplative is better and that, that, he's telling us something about our nature too. That will not be taken from us. We, I hate this advice that we get at graduations and commencements and stuff. What do they say? They say, change the world. Go out there and change the world.

• 1:20:42Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Which is like, the one thing you can't do, the one thing you cannot do is change the world. A more sensible society would say, no, no. Understand the world. Interpret the world. Begin with the contemplative. Figure out what you're doing, where we're going, what this all means, and then act. You have to act, but you have to act in accordance with reality. That, that too is very, very practical.

• 1:21:13Josh Axe?

  You know, one of the things I love about the Bible is it just, if you, if you are able to, to your point, contemplate, really sit down, think through things, choose through things, and think analytically, you're, you're able to take these principles and apply them to anything. Like, like, because I am in the health field, one thing that I, I'm sitting there thinking about is there are so many people that are sick because they're doing too much.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:38Josh Axe?

  I mean, way too much. And of course, there's a smaller degree of people, but still a lot of people that are sick because they're doing nothing. They're just so sedentary, not moving, not exercising, not walking. They're just, and, and it's, you've gotta find, you got, you gotta find the balance if you're gonna be healthy.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  I do both, unfortunately. I am, I am too busy. I do too many things in my professional life and it's, it's a problem. I try to pull back a little bit. And also, I haven't exercised since, I think, the Clinton administration. So it's, it's easy to fall into, you can actually simultaneously fall into both errors.

• 1:22:09Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  Which is not good. You have to, you have to take care of these things.

• 1:22:12Josh Axe?

  But you're all obviously pretty contemplative because people can't quote, you know, the, you know, the saints and philosophers like you do. So I mean, you gotta be able to...

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  I appreciate that, but I'm very lucky in that I have a fake job. I don't have a real job. I, I get to, you know... It's part of my job. I get to read and I get to think about these things. And I have to sell cigars on the side, too, and you know, all these other, that's more a labor of love. But in the modern world, it's very difficult to do these things. And it's why that line, you know, about the mystic keeps coming back to me.

• 1:22:44Josh Axe?

  I love it. So good.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  Because you think, you think of all these guys who go viral on the internet for getting on your grind and going out there and getting your side hustle and making your money. And you just think like, look, I like money. I like having money. It's, you actually do have to be responsible for your family and make sure they're taken care of. And so you need that stuff. But it, just chasing money or chasing women in a series of sterile and fruitless sexual escapades, all of that is like, the, very dumb. Like, just from, if you just sit and contemplate for a second, and just look at it rationally, it's a huge waste of time that really doesn't benefit you in the end because you can't take it with you and you're aiming at something else.

• 1:23:30Josh Axe?

  Well, I got a couple more questions for you. I'm gonna let you off easy because I could have come in here and asked you questions about, you know, Candace and Ben, but I'm not, I'm not going to. I'm gonna spare you.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  My favorite topic. Throw in Tucker, too. That's great. You can even talk about that.

• 1:23:42Josh Axe?

  I'm sure. So, um, you've got kids. You got three. First off, you got a five-year-old, a three-year-old, a one-year-old. I mean, that's, that's chaos.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  We're, we're moving quickly. Now, I, it took us a couple of years on the first one. So I actually, when people, you know, sometimes we talk about these very controversial bioethical questions.

• 1:24:03Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  IVF, surrogacy, they're very much in the news. And people get angry because I oppose those things. And they say, well, you don't know what it's like to deal with infertility. I actually do. Luckily, I didn't have to deal with it for too long. But I dealt with it for two years. And it's very, very painful. I'm aware that it's very, very painful. And I see why people turn to things that I think ultimately are not justifiable. But it took us two years. And then we got our first. And then I was told, and you can tell me if this is good health advice, we were told that while a mother is nursing, You basically can't get pregnant.

• 1:24:36Josh Axe?

  That's total. It's one of the greatest lies in all of fertility.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  I discovered that is a lie. That is a total lie.

• 1:24:44Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Which is great, because then I got my second kid out of that. And, but not to be TMI, but the births were cesarean, two emergency and then one, the third one, they kind of tell you, you gotta

• 1:24:55Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  Schedule it. So, we, they tell you to be safe, you have to space it out.

• 1:25:00Josh Axe?

  Hey, by the way, if you have a fourth, I got a great midwife. If your wife's willing to do VBAC anyways, we'll talk about it later.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  I know, I'm working on the fourth.

• 1:25:07Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  And working on it is, you know, more than half the fun. But we waited the amount of time that they tell you to be safe, you know, to, but it's relatively short. It's about 18 months or something like that. And so we're hitting them 18 months. But I think at this point, I'm not going to be able to get my ideal number of, you know, 16, like I'm a Hapsburg Empress or something. I don't think I'm going to get that that far. And I've got all boys.

• 1:25:34Josh Axe?

  I mean, that's, I got two daughters and it's, there's a, you've seen Nate Bargazzi? I mean, he's got this, you know, this, this segment where he talks about, you know, he kind of traded his, his, his girls for someone's boys for, like, he watched them for a few hours and what it was like. He kind of talks about it like, you know, the guy threw me a bobcat. It's a pretty funny, funny sketch, but it's, man, I can imagine it's a madhouse. Well, all that being said, are, how much, I mean, I know they're still fairly young. Your five-year-old now, though, is probably at the point where, like, I know, like, I've got a five-year-old, too. So, we're doing stories at night, like, going through the, like, a Bible, you know,

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Kids' Bible.

• 1:26:09Josh Axe?

  Kids' Bible book. And, and it's great. But are there any, any things, things that, as you've, I know you've, you've been able to interview some really amazing people and some really spiritual giants as well. Is there anything in particular that you're excited about, whether you're doing with your kids now, or you're excited to do with them in the future, to help them grow in their faith?

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Well, I, you mentioned Sunday School earlier. We still have it at my parish. So, my kids, even, you know, three years old and four, now five years old, they go to an hour and, hour or hour and a half or so of Sunday School. And then, I like the traditional Latin Mass, and we're very blessed to have one here. It goes long. So, that, you know, that could go an hour and a half, hour 45 or so. So, the kids are getting like, Three hours or more of religion on their Sunday morning. And I think it's good, it's crazy to do to a three-year-old. I say, no, you have to do it to the three-year-old. That's how you train him to do it when he's a 12-year-old. Yeah, yeah. You gotta kind of get him accustomed to it. So, obviously, we do a lot of that.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  And then we read all sorts of stories at night. But it's not even just, you know, we have, we say, you know, say a friendly rosary sometimes. We have icons over the house. And, uh, but a Protestant friend of mine, Kirk Cameron, he has a book series, Brave Books. They're great. So, the books, you know, they have these great, they correct some of the moral lessons in popular books. And I've gotten a lot of these books. And I'll never forgive Kirk for this. The books are long. These are long books. And so, my kid, it's 7:25, you know, I'm gonna put the kid down at 7:30. He says, "Day, I want," he loves the one about gun control, the coconut cannon one. He loves, both of them, love it.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  I say, "Boys, this is gonna take me 15 minutes to read," I'll never forgive him for this, because the boys love those books. But even those kinds of little things. Yeah. They do, you know, they get, at least the subconscious going. They get the kids thinking. That, I find, is very important. But the regular prayers is great. Even, we say prayer, prayer two before bed. Each of my older boys gets to say a prayer before bed. And it's very cute, because we like the St. Michael prayer. My eldest says this almost every night. Which, for people who don't know it, it kind of fell out of, it used to be said after every Mass, it kind of fell out of favor recently. And some Protestants know it, some don't. It's a great prayer, it's very quick, it's a very masculine one. I think your boys will like this, you know, if you're listening. "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls." That's tough guy, that ain't sappy hymnody, you know? That's right. That's tough guy stuff. So, my eldest will say that one. My youngest will say maybe the guardian angel prayer, or the Hail Mary, or sometimes St. Michael, we'll do it back to back. But I find that the regularity of that prayers are, the boys hearing their parents say the rosary. I find it's very helpful because it just gets the subconscious working.

• 1:29:13Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  You know, it creates a picture of spiritual reality for the boys that I think the younger you can do it, the better. I don't, have you had a similar experience?

• 1:29:21Josh Axe?

  Yeah, well, you know, one, I was really, I went to a Christian school growing up and at least through eighth grade, and because of it, you know, we just, you memorize Bible verses. It's part of what you did. And so, you know, so I, I think the memorization of Bible verses has been so helpful for me. If I have a problem in life or something, I mean, a lot of times these things come into play, the biblical stories. But yeah, with our, with our daughters, I think praying at meals, like at dinner and letting them pray.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:51Josh Axe?

  And, and just Bible stories. So it's, to your point, just, I think that blocking and tackling of praying and reading the Bible.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:01Josh Axe?

  Is just, it's so, so powerful.

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  Gets you pretty far.

• 1:30:04Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, just getting them, just making this, making religion a part of their life.

• 1:30:09Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  At least on Sunday, at least, you know, that's kind of the bare minimum. But actually, that's not enough. If it's part of your life every day, even down to the prayer before meals is key. Because you gotta eat.

• 1:30:22Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  Except when you're fasting, but kids don't fast. The prayer before meals is great because it means that religion is in their mind and in their bodies multiple times a day. That's, that's a good start.

• 1:30:32Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah. I know even when I went to college later on by myself, it was like I, every meal, that's, I was, I was praying, you know, so it's, it's that, it's that, that verse of, you know, teach a kid, you know, train your child in the way they should go and it will not depart from them.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:48Josh Axe?

  And, man, it's so, so important. Okay. One of the final questions.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:55Josh Axe?

  If you had 60 seconds to convert me to Catholicism, what's your elevator pitch?

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  I had 60 minutes and I'm not sure I succeeded. 60 seconds. Okay, well, I know I would go to, for a lot of people, I'd go to sacrament. But you're already there. I don't need to convince you on sacraments. I would go to antiquity, the way that the Church Fathers spoke about the Catholic Church, specifically that phrase even, or the way that St. Augustine, a little later, says, "Rome has spoken, the matter is settled." You know, this pointing even back to early antiquity, to Rome as being a kind of arbiter of, even of last resort between the churches. But you're already kind of there. We've talked about the Church Fathers. I don't need to get you there. So then, I guess what I would point to is the Nicene Creed. You probably believe, I suspect you believe in the Nicene, C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  Okay, the Nicene Creed says at the end, "We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church." And some traditional Protestant denominations will, the lowercase Catholic, as you know. I say, "Well, the whole point of the Church is it's embodied and it's physical. Christ picks particular apostles." But let's forget about that word for a second. It means universal, anyway. One, the one, that principle of unity. I think our Lord wants the Church to be united. Yeah. And that's something we must tend toward as a matter of the faith, even according to anyone who would pray the Nicene Creed. And the way that that traditionally has been done, I think, going back to the Council of Jerusalem,

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  certainly, I think going back to Christ giving the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven to Peter, but is that it goes to the Bishop of Rome. Peter is the first bishop of Rome. But even if you don't believe that, or I don't know, you haven't read that history, or you disagree with that history, or whatever, I think you would have to agree in principle that there must be unity. And for there to be unity, there has to be someone... Who has final say? We say God has final say. That's true. Scripture has final say, sure. But we've been talking the whole time about how we have to interpret things. There's a role of interpretation in time and space in a world that is mediated by symbols.

• 1:33:09Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:10Speaker 01

  And so, someone has to do that. There has to be, you say, well, I go to my priest or my pastor. Well, what happens when the pastors disagree? That doesn't sound, okay, then you go to your elders or your bishops or your presbyters. Okay, and goes all the, but there has to be someone. And you might say, well, it sure ain't gonna be that guy in Rome. It ain't gonna be that, I don't know, I don't like this pope or that pope or whatever. There have been some rough popes over the years. That's not even the point. If we agree on sacramental theology, if we agree on the need for unity, if we agree on the need for authority, if we agree that things ultimately have to be unsettled by the decider, you know, by that one person, then I think you're already there. The only,

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  the only question is the details. But you already have a Catholic faith, even if you don't, you haven't swum the Tiber officially.

• 1:33:59Josh Axe?

  That's good. That's good. So, you know, I've read probably, and I'm an avid, avid reader and listener, and so I've listened to 20 books on early church.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:08Josh Axe?

  Both from the Catholic standpoint, the Orthodox and the Christian. And I will tell you that I have, one, I think everybody, everybody should go back and go back to, what did the apostles or the disciples of the apostles, you know, whether it's Polycarp or Ignatius, or I mean, these, yeah, like, what did they believe? And what did they think? And to be honest, it was been for me, very enriching of my faith. It gave me a greater degree in respect for, and just understanding of Catholicism and Orthodoxy and where we are today.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  That's what, you know, that's what John Henry Newman did. John, who was very anti-Catholic. He did convert and became a saint, actually. But, but he's one of the, you know, good old Saint Jack Newman. He's one of the great guys, Oxford Movement. And, and this was basically it for him, was kind of delving into the history. And it's, it's, it is delightful. This is the other, people say, well, why do I have to do that? Why do I have to read Polycarp? Why do I have to read? It's like, you don't have to. But... It's great. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you avail yourself of that?

• 1:35:08Josh Axe?

  Yeah, well, why wouldn't you understand what, again, the disciples of the disciples? What they were learning, how they were living there. I mean, reading about Polyc... I mean, the martyrdom and what they did, how they gave their lives for the church. It's so inspiring and powerful. I'll say this, one thing I thought about is, and this is actually, this is interesting, because this is actually a quote or idea from the Lord of the Rings. So, but there's this idea of that sometimes if one person has power, there can be a greater risk of corruption. When you have two, there can be a level of division. With three, sometimes there's balance, and we see that in the Holy Trinity. And I think, I just, this is just a theory I have.

• 1:35:50Josh Axe?

  I think that one of the reasons today we've seen sort of orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism is there's sort of a balancing out of the tradition, the ritual, the personalization, and where all of them can get in balance. I think maybe they've helped balance each other to a degree. But at the same time, you know, my desire is for there to be one church, united together, and...

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  You know where else you... It's a great way to think of the balance, because in the Middle Ages, we mentioned Dante earlier, there was a great dispute between Pope Boniface VIII and his followers, his political followers, and Dante and his political comrades. And the question was over whether or not the Pope had temporal authority or only spiritual authority. And it's explicated in the symbol of the two swords, and whether or not the Pope has both the swords, or if these kind of... And I'm with Dante, as I am on most things, and Dante points out, you know, the Pope has, I mean, I guess, in a limited sense, a territorial authority, the Papal States, or the Vatican City, or something. But he's really the spiritual authority, as the bishops are, you know?

• 1:37:01Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  There's the temporal authority, and they shouldn't be opposed to each other. They should sort of, there is a balance there. And at the final count, the temporal authority should be illuminated by the spiritual authority. You can't have your nation or your empire divorced from religion. It needs to be illuminated by it. Yeah. But there is a civil authority that is distinct, that is separate. And I'd say, well, as you were saying, you know, there can be balance with a triumvirate. I think, okay, well, let's go. I like the number three. It's a good number, a meaningful number. What would the balance there be? And I think perhaps the balance there would be the father, like the, like us. Yeah. Like the, the family as being a balance. It's the fundamental political unit. Subsidiarity is a key principle of a Christian politics, that, you know, you have levels of authority. Yeah.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  And we want decisions to be made at the lowest level of competency. And so you don't want a totalitarian state in the civil authority. You want the family, which is the bedrock political unit, marriage being the symbol of Christ's love for his church. So you have a, in a way, a kind of a triumvirate of, of balance. Yeah. There. And you, you do see it in the American government. This also coming from Aquinas, maybe directly or maybe indirectly, that, you know, Aquinas has asked, what's the best kind of government? And he says, well, look, it's a monarchy. I mean, like, heaven's not a democracy, right? It's a monarchy, but it's a special kind of monarchy. It's actually kind of a mixed regime. There were three good kinds of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  There are bad versions of that, which is tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule. The difference being one is for the common good, one is for the private interest. And Aquinas says, the best kind of government is a monarchy that is balanced with healthy representation for the aristocracy, which has a strong democratic element, too. And what's kind of interesting from our perspective as Americans is that's kind of how they set up the country. That actually is roughly the constitutional order. And so your point on the balance, I think, is, is very, very good. And they can't, you know, if you're going to have a spiritual authority and a temporal authority and a, I don't know, maybe a family authority, they can't be opposed to each other. They have to all, you know, just like your soul can't be opposed to your body. They have to work together or they're going to fall apart.

• 1:39:14Josh Axe?

  Yeah. Well, one thing I've been inspired about is, I think, as I mentioned, versus when I was, you know, growing up in the 90s, I feel like there is a greater level of just camaraderie and connection between Protestants and Catholics. I mean, I love, whether it's watching your show, or Ali Best Stucky, or Lila Rose, and seeing a lot of the crossovers here over the years. It's been so much, again, so inspiring for me. And I wanted to bring you on to talk about all these things because I've had a lot of amazing pastors and Protestants on, but I really love to hear from my Catholic brothers and sisters. So, thanks so much for all you do. I have been really grateful and appreciative of the way that you make people

• 1:39:51Josh Axe?

  think and just how articulate you are about, you know, really challenging topics and just helping educate everybody on the truth and bringing your faith into things. That's something I always greatly respect. And you started off talking a little bit about Alvin Plantega. You know, one of the things I know he's written about in his books is sort of like the workplace for us is ministry and being excellent in everything we do in our professions. And you've done a great job of that.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. First of all, I need to, I need to come here just for the compliments. You know, I don't get that at The Daily Wire. But I appreciate too that you brought it back to Plantega, because I remember years ago, I was watching an interview of him. And he's this great kind of Calvinist analytic philosopher. Interestingly, a Calvinist at a Catholic university, Notre Dame, I think that's still a Catholic university. I'm not sure, actually. But he's a great guy. And they said, what would you have been if you hadn't been a philosopher? And he said, well, I probably would have been a pastor. And I thought this... At the time, there was that new atheism and everyone wanted to make everything seem very rational or secular or something. And he said, "No, I probably would have been a pastor, obviously, you know, my faith is very important to me." And he didn't shy away from that.

• 1:41:05Josh Axe?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  And like, he has a real job, like a very hard job, actually, to be an analytic philosopher. I have a relatively easy job. I'm a political pundit. That's my job. I'm not a priest. I'm not a bishop. I've never been offered, you know, I guess I technically could be elected pope. It hasn't happened yet. You know, that's my job. I'm a pundit and a cigar salesman. And sometimes people are surprised that I want to talk about religion and faith. I say, like, "Well, to me, that's very practical, because I don't... How could I talk about politics if I didn't have recourse to religion? How could I talk about the law if I didn't have recourse to the moral law and the natural law? How could I talk about how we live together in society if I didn't have some conception of man's final end? How could you do any

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  job? How could you be a window cleaner? How could you be a barista? How could you be an accountant or a lawyer or CEO if you didn't have some conception of who we are, what our cosmos is in the universe, and what our ultimate purpose is?" I mean, I'm great. I'd love being able to do that, but, you know, we all have to do that. I mean, you actually, you can't really get out of bed in the morning if you're not coming to some conclusions about those things.

• 1:42:14Josh Axe?

  Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree. Well, Michael, thanks so much for coming on. This has been awesome. And I want to encourage everybody, check out Michael on X. Check out his show on Daily Wire and YouTube. I watch you mostly on YouTube. You've got such a great YouTube channel. So I encourage you to check out Michael Knowles here on YouTube as well. And just want to say, hey, thanks, everybody, for tuning in. One of my last pieces of encouragement for everybody is there's such great value in contemplating and thinking deeply and just pausing and reflecting and just taking your time to connect with God. And also, you know, as Christians, we should be doing everything we can to live a life of excellence more than anyone else, because we're not competing for, you know, crowns here on earth. We're competing for crowns in heaven. We are called to expand the kingdom

• 1:42:58Josh Axe?

  of God here. And so do it in your profession, do it in your family. Let it permeate every part of your life. And that's one thing I appreciate about Michael, is he's done such an amazing job of doing that in his career and all the things he's been doing. So I want to say, thanks so much for tuning in here to the show. Don't forget to subscribe and share. I can't wait to see you on the next episode.