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John Morris | The Christian Reeve Podcast #243 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
• 0:03
  Podcast. Before we get into today's
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  episode, Please remember to like, share and subscribe.
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  importantly, enjoy the show. Thank you so much.
• 0:45
  So you also pursued a dream of becoming a bodybuilder.
• 0:48
  Yeah. And I think this is really,
• 0:50
  really fascinating. Like what were the key takeaways
• 0:52
  from this and the lessons that you took from this experience?
• 0:58
  Again, I think how to present yourself, how to stand out, how
• 1:02
  to be different and unique, Everything down to the music
• 1:07
  you're posing, music that you use.
• 1:10
  So I know this is controversial, but I'll share it anyway.
• 1:14
  There was two pieces of music that I really used.
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  One of them was Sweet Child of Mine by Guns and Roses.
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  The other was Chris Benoit's theme.
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  And I used that. I mean, I had every single move,
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  turn everything down to a fine art again, talking about the
• 1:30
  addictive personality. I was training like my life
• 1:33
  dependent on it, you know, And I think if you're going to go into
• 1:36
  something. Anything really it's it's going
• 1:41
  with that focus, you know, again figure out what it is that you
• 1:45
  want to do, but if you can learn marketing and then you learn
• 1:47
  sales, those are going to be your two biggest assets because
• 1:51
  if you've got those you can market and sell anything.
• 1:54
  It really is that simple. But with bodybuilding, I mean
• 1:56
  it, it taught a lot with regards to confidence and with regards
• 2:00
  to what is actually possible and really what you want to do in
• 2:04
  life as well. So I mentioned at the top of
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  this that you've had like a lot of challenges, particularly
• 2:11
  health challenges that have have been setbacks in your life.
• 2:14
  And as I understand from my research with wrestling with
• 2:18
  bodybuilding, the reason why you were not able to sort of keep
• 2:23
  pursuing that was because of these challenges.
• 2:25
  So could you speak to us a little bit more about the
• 2:27
  challenges you faced with health and ultimately how you've
• 2:31
  overcome them and kept evolving and changing as a human being?
• 2:35
  I think that's a really great question because a lot of people
• 2:38
  seem to touch on that these days and I don't want to say it's
• 2:43
  it's not real, but some of the times I think it's it's milked a
• 2:46
  little bit more than what it actually, you know, is.
• 2:49
  So I was 15 years old, I got diagnosed with colitis, which is
• 2:53
  ulcers basically in your stomach.
• 2:56
  It seems to be more and more of AI, don't want to say popular.
• 3:01
  Condition these days, but a lot of teenagers seem to have it
• 3:03
  largely because of the diet, largely because of, you know,
• 3:06
  additives in food, water and ultimately living lifestyle as
• 3:10
  well. So I had been training in terms
• 3:15
  of weightlifting by that point for maybe about 3-4 years.
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  I had looked at going into powerlifting at one point and
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  you know, it was a fellow that worked with my dad who was a big
• 3:27
  jacked up guy. And he literally was like,
• 3:30
  you're training more like a, you know, power lifter or a
• 3:32
  bodybuilder, you know, so maybe don't think about the Olympics
• 3:35
  because I just couldn't put on weight to save my life.
• 3:38
  I mean, I really struggled as a, you know, I was ripped to the
• 3:41
  core, but I I literally just couldn't put on weight to save
• 3:44
  my life. Is that because of high
• 3:46
  metabolism or the health? Problems.
• 3:47
  Seriously, high metabolism. So again, I had, you know, like
• 3:51
  an 8 pack, you know, without trying, you know, it was
• 3:54
  literally muscles on on top of muscles.
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  I didn't have to diet at all when going to bodybuilding shows
• 4:00
  because I was just so ripped. You know, that changes as you
• 4:03
  get a little bit older, but I've still got a really high
• 4:07
  metabolism which actually still works, really, you know my
• 4:10
  favour, but with regards to health.
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  So I get diagnosed when I'm 15 years old.
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  I don't really know much about it.
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  They give you all this medication and everything that
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  you got to take. They didn't know much about it
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  in terms of the doctors at that time, even though it was
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  discovered in the late 1800s. There was still a whole lot.
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  We don't know what's or or we're not willing to place a
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  definition on what causes it or anything else.
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  I have my own suspicions for sure, based on the research that
• 4:38
  I've done, you know, so, so that's going on.
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  By the time I was 17, I was competing in my first
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  bodybuilding shows. I was one of top five in Britain
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  at one point in time. Most places I was at least
• 4:51
  number one or two and you know that was.
• 4:54
  That was super cool. It's like you're living the
• 4:56
  dream, but you are excreting blood, basically, you know every
• 5:00
  time you go and it's excruciantly painful that the
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  best way I can describe it is like someone holding a lit flame
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  or a garden rake being pulled across your insides.
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  It's horrible. But also having medication that
• 5:14
  works can help. So I'm not a spiritual
• 5:17
  practitioner that just totally prescribes, you know, spirit,
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  spirit, spirit. Sometimes you do need an
• 5:22
  external, you know, thing to sort things out.
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  But I was told, you know, I was about 18 years old doing really,
• 5:28
  really well in bodybuilding. And I was basically told if you
• 5:32
  keep doing this, it, it ain't looking good for you.
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  You know, basically people with ulcerative colitis, they sit in
• 5:38
  a rocking chair and they wait to die.
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  You know you need no stress. You need none of that.
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  So I competed all the way through my my second year did
• 5:46
  very, very well. There was a a number of health
• 5:49
  scares that happened on my last show.
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  Thankfully nothing fatal happened with that.
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  But you know that that was it was always the potential and
• 5:57
  then it was like OK, what are you going to do next you know
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  and and you know really found my next path.
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  It was you know. Again, I I firmly believe.
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  You know in in divine spirit and God in omens and and you know
• 6:10
  everything being LED. Nothing just randomly happens.
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  And often times when you look back on these things you like,
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  this is how this connects. Even if it doesn't make sense
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  right now, it may do or it may not be for you to make sense of
• 6:22
  later on. So that happened.
• 6:26
  I then became a youth worker. Feel free to jump in at any
• 6:28
  point, Christian, because I'll just rattle some information out
• 6:31
  because it was, you know, maybe four key things that had
• 6:33
  happened in in. My my life to this point and I
• 6:37
  start studying at a theological college.
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  I was then diagnosed with dyspraxia, which is meant to be
• 6:45
  how your movement sort of happens and and you know you can
• 6:49
  sort of trip over nothing for example.
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  For me, this was more to do with my eyes and how I process things
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  more than anything else. I've since found ways to to, you
• 6:58
  know, deal with that as well, which I'll I'll talk about in a
• 7:00
  minute because it's not all doom and gloom, but I have, I have to
• 7:03
  pardon the pun, paint the picture, you know.
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  And then, you know, there was dyspraxia, there was dyslexia
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  that was thrown there. You go through your whole manner
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  of tests. I just physically couldn't get
• 7:14
  academia into my head at that point.
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  I just didn't have the maturity to to get it.
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  I have a severe flare up of colitis when I'm studying.
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  I end up hospitalized and and that was basically the end of
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  that. Anytime I tried to go back I
• 7:26
  ended up severely. I'll so you Fast forward a
• 7:29
  couple of years, all manner of other things going on.
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  There was a time in my life and again, bread crumbs where
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  colitis was so severe. Because you told a number of
• 7:46
  things with colitis that it can either become cancerous or your
• 7:49
  bowel can basically explode, those are kind of your options
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  If this is not taken care of. The flip side of that is the
• 7:55
  medication that they give you. If you are me, you can be
• 7:59
  seriously susceptible to almost borderlining personality
• 8:03
  disorder as a result of medication.
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  It's like something's there and it triggers it.
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  And you know, it's, you know, if you, if you're a little bit
• 8:11
  happy, you're like Bugs Bunny, if you're a little bit
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  depressed. You're ready to throw yourself
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  off the Golden Gate Bridge, You know, it's it's a really bizarre
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  twist. The other thing about it is if
• 8:22
  anyone's seen the the Marvel series Moon Knight, which my
• 8:26
  wife and I are previously going through, it's like that once you
• 8:30
  take this pill, you literally have no recollection until the
• 8:34
  effects of the medication wear off, which is really dangerous
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  and really frightening. That had a whole host of stuff
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  that had happened in in my life as a result of that.
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  But then the final thing that really happened that we
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  discovered more, you know, probably within the last sort of
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  three or four years when I was writing more and more was
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  amorosis, which is temporary blindness.
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  So you can literally be having a conversation like what we are
• 8:57
  now and your sight just goes you know, or you can be writing
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  completely normal, blah blah, blah, blah.
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  Your sight just goes, it doesn't hurt.
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  It's basically your optical nerve just spasming.
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  Most most people optical nerve does this and it's just
• 9:10
  pulsating just normally where you go.
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  How long would it last for on average?
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  It it varies. So there's sometimes it can last
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  for 5 minutes and sometimes it can last for half an hour.
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  What was? What was that the most dangerous
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  situation where it sort of triggered when you were?
• 9:27
  I I wouldn't see. I don't think it ever triggered.
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  When I was learning to drive, I was going to say that would be
• 9:34
  the most terrifying moment. I did.
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  I mean, unfortunately, I was on a medication at that point and I
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  was, I was, you know, it was like in and out of body
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  experiences. And I remember, you know,
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  talking to my driving instructor about that and he was like, you
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  shouldn't be on the road. And my wife was bummed about
• 9:48
  that. My mother-in-law was bummed
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  about that. And I'm like, what would you
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  rather you know that I kill someone or that you know I I
• 9:55
  don't drive? You know, so there are umpteen
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  ways. I mean I've, I've survived 3536
• 10:01
  years without, you know, driving.
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  I get about fine, you know, but but yeah, Amarosis, the first
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  time that that happened that I can recall, I was sitting on a
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  train going from air to I think it was either Glasgow or
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  Paisley, which about a 45 minute journey and I'm sitting there
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  looking out the window and everything's nice and all of a
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  sudden my sight just goes just like that.
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  All I hear is the ticket, the ticket guy coming.
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  And I can see sometimes that the peripheral vision, sometimes
• 10:28
  that goes, sometimes it's your frontal vision.
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  But the ticket guy comes by, he's like, can I check your
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  tickets? And I'm like, I would love to be
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  able to share this with you, but I can't see right now.
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  And he was like, are you on drugs?
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  Are you high? Are you, You know, because
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  again, this is an unusual thing. It's like one in, I think
• 10:44
  100,000 people that actually have this.
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  But yeah, that was, that was one of the most bizarre things.
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  But most of the time, like I said, it doesn't hurt often,
• 10:54
  thankfully. But yeah, so those those four
• 10:57
  things, when you combine them all together, you know, you have
• 11:02
  to learn how to evolve and how to deviate and how to switch up
• 11:06
  what you're doing. Because otherwise, you know,
• 11:09
  it's like what are you going to do?
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  This is something I want to stress on as well, is that you
• 11:14
  have reinvented yourself several times over when most people
• 11:18
  probably would have quit and and no one would have blamed them.
• 11:22
  If anything, like I mean wrestling was a big dream for
• 11:25
  you. Your health let you down.
• 11:27
  Same with bodybuilding again. Like, how did you find the inner
• 11:32
  strength to to get through that and go, OK, well, I'm going to,
• 11:35
  I'm going to try something else. I'm going to reinvent myself
• 11:38
  again. Like where do you get?
• 11:39
  That I think the answer is simple.
• 11:40
  My brain just doesn't work that quickly.
• 11:45
  Tell people it's like, how did you not get terrified about
• 11:47
  this? You know, when you've been in
• 11:48
  dangerous situations, things simple.
• 11:50
  It wasn't that I was being really brave, a really tough
• 11:52
  guy. It was like, my brain just does
• 11:54
  not work that quickly. It's like, oh, I'm in this
• 11:56
  dangerous situation. It'll get there in a minute.
• 12:00
  Yeah, yeah, you know, and yet your brain's having 60,000
• 12:03
  thoughts every single day. But but it's just that whole
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  thing. It's like I go into another
• 12:08
  plane. I go into a completely different
• 12:10
  gear. We had this when Facebook
• 12:13
  changed their rules of how we were able to promote and how we
• 12:17
  were able to market and things. And they were just like, Nope,
• 12:20
  you can't sell your paintings anymore.
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  We can't do this from a personal page.
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  You've got to now have a business page.
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  So you've got to re establish yourself.
• 12:26
  And I was like, I know, let's go and build an art school.
• 12:29
  You know, it's like, because I was just like, OK, if we can't
• 12:32
  do this, then we need to do this.
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  There's there's always been something more, you know,
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  certainly guiding, you know, for me it was God, you know, that
• 12:41
  was just leading, guiding. And it's, you know, and I I
• 12:45
  think one of the things that really sets me apart when I talk
• 12:47
  about God and divine spirit and things is I don't bullshit.
• 12:50
  You know, genuinely, I will be straight.
• 12:52
  I'm. I'm not going to sit there, you
• 12:54
  know, as a religious preacher on a Sunday morning that's going to
• 12:56
  be like, well, you got to do it this way.
• 12:56
  You got to do it that way. You got to have your theology.
• 12:59
  If your theology, do you think God is limited to your theology?
• 13:02
  You know, and and it's just like, I look at what's going on.
• 13:06
  I look at what's happening within me.
• 13:08
  And there's never been a moment where I sat there and thought, I
• 13:11
  can't do this, you know, even with the new novel series, You
• 13:14
  know, I told my wife now again for a guy with Amarosis, a guy
• 13:17
  with dyspractia and dyslexia. You tell somebody you're going
• 13:20
  to write a best selling novel and you you've got the grammar
• 13:23
  skills of a three-year old. You know, what do you do about
• 13:26
  this? Well, the answer is simple.
• 13:27
  You study that which you desire to become.
• 13:29
  So I sat under some of the world's best authors, the Dan
• 13:32
  Browns of this world, the Joyce Carroll Oates, the Margaret
• 13:34
  Atwoods, the Neil Gaimans, you know, And I listened and I
• 13:38
  absorbed and I studied grammar. I studied every single thing
• 13:42
  that I needed to do rather than, oh, I can't do this because of
• 13:45
  this. That's why any people that we
• 13:47
  work with that are. You know, claiming benefits so
• 13:51
  that they've got a disability, they've got this, that and the
• 13:53
  other. And they tell me, oh, I can't do
• 13:55
  this. I'm just like, really?
• 13:57
  Can you think, can you move your arms?
• 14:00
  Those are only two things you need to do to work remotely.
• 14:02
  And more often than not, the answers.
• 14:04
  Yeah, right. You're in a wheelchair.
• 14:05
  Perfect. It means you don't need to get
• 14:06
  an office chair. You can sit and work on a
• 14:08
  laptop. You know, literally.
• 14:10
  I mean, we had someone yesterday that was like the worst thing
• 14:13
  that happened to us, you know, was, was, was so and so lost
• 14:16
  their job. I was like, really?
• 14:17
  I came back from America. I had my entire life taken away
• 14:20
  from me. I had my health taken away from
• 14:22
  me. The church that I work for
• 14:23
  basically took a massive dump. All of me.
• 14:25
  It wouldn't help everything going on.
• 14:29
  Is that really the worst thing? And then the response was way to
• 14:32
  put it in perspective. I'm like, that's what I do.
• 14:36
  Yeah. I wanted to touch on this
• 14:37
  because you mentioned I got a lot of the information when I
• 14:40
  did my research on your website. It's very useful.
• 14:42
  I recommend people check it out. You stepped away from the church
• 14:46
  and people stopped wanting to be involved with you.
• 14:49
  Now I looked. I remember reading this and just
• 14:52
  thinking like, yeah, I wonder why, like, people are so fickle
• 14:56
  when it's as soon as soon as you try something a bit different or
• 15:02
  you express maybe a disinterest in something or a change of
• 15:05
  perspective or view or whatever, it's amazing, that is all.
• 15:10
  I've noticed this as well. Sometimes, like, you'll make a
• 15:12
  mistake in life and suddenly people just, like, kick you to
• 15:16
  the curb like you're nothing. Like, oh, you made a mistake,
• 15:19
  well, therefore you you're just nothing to me now.
• 15:21
  And it's like, wow, OK, why did why did people react this way to
• 15:25
  you, and and why did you choose to step away from the church?
• 15:29
  So going back to what we're talking about with colitis
• 15:33
  because it it plays a really pivotal role in all the stuff
• 15:37
  that's going on. So I had had a flare up of
• 15:40
  colitis in I want to say 2015. I think it was 20.
• 15:45
  Yeah, it was 2015. So serious stuff.
• 15:48
  And you start to think there's a perforation in your bowel, you
• 15:51
  know, that, you know, you got to be on this medication and it's
• 15:53
  called Prednisone or Prednisolone, as we say in the
• 15:56
  UK. And literally that is the stuff
• 15:59
  that is, you know, multiple personality disorder kind of
• 16:03
  breeding stuff. So you got to be really careful
• 16:05
  when you think about this stuff. Again, I've done my research
• 16:07
  afterwards and was literally just like, wow, OK, this is, you
• 16:12
  know? I'm not the only one that's
• 16:14
  susceptible to this. There are other people.
• 16:16
  So I take the medication again. You, you zone out, you have
• 16:21
  these, you know, complete blanks and everything else.
• 16:24
  And at some point during the night I'd said something
• 16:30
  inappropriately. Again, I never looked at what
• 16:34
  the message was afterwards, but basically I have a rough idea of
• 16:38
  of what was there and I take accountability for that now.
• 16:42
  The flip side of this, because it was something that I held for
• 16:47
  a long time afterwards. Just shame, you know, shame and
• 16:50
  embarrassment and everything about it.
• 16:52
  You know, it was literally like I it was basically like, you
• 16:57
  know, I was the devil's son in in in the church's mind.
• 16:59
  They blew this out of proportion.
• 17:01
  The person that I'd spoken to blew this out of proportion.
• 17:04
  And it's like, OK, so you haven't been?
• 17:10
  You know again, to to understand everything.
• 17:13
  There are three sides to every story.
• 17:14
  There's yours, there's mine, there's the truth.
• 17:16
  I remember things in such intricate detail that if I feed
• 17:22
  you back lines you can almost guarantee you can knock out the
• 17:26
  the last option and then you can tell me if if what I'm saying is
• 17:29
  is the nonsense. So this person had been flirting
• 17:34
  with me had been, you know, very much around the youth groups and
• 17:36
  what not, you know, was, was. You know, a mother in the 40s or
• 17:41
  whatever. And on and on and on and on and
• 17:43
  on. And I'm like, OK, so you didn't
• 17:46
  do any of this then? You didn't leave, you didn't
• 17:48
  plant seeds, you didn't tell me about affairs that you're having
• 17:51
  XYZ. And it was just an unfortunate
• 17:53
  night that again, the swords have been, the seeds have been
• 17:55
  sown. You said something, you know,
• 17:57
  when you're unawares and whatnot, Fine.
• 18:00
  OK, again, like we said earlier on, have the good graces.
• 18:03
  Not to blow things out of proportion, but to deal with
• 18:05
  things you know. That's my view.
• 18:08
  I know, I know. That's how I would deal with it.
• 18:10
  And I've, you know, obviously had the flip side of that
• 18:12
  experience afterwards. So basically I I get into the
• 18:17
  church, I tell them prior to any of medication and prior to any
• 18:22
  of this happening, look, I need to go on this medication.
• 18:24
  Do you want me to continue working?
• 18:26
  They said Yep, absolutely fine. So they were with absolutely
• 18:29
  everything. What happens happens again, Like
• 18:33
  I say, it was not with a youth, it was with an older mother and
• 18:35
  it was a message. It was not physical contact or
• 18:38
  anything like that. And it wasn't even that bad to
• 18:41
  be honest with you from what I'm gathering from what other people
• 18:43
  have said, because she literally opened her mouth about this and
• 18:46
  tried to destroy my relationship.
• 18:49
  And a big part of that was because I hadn't acted on her
• 18:52
  advances many years ago. I'll be honest and just say that
• 18:55
  interesting. Yeah, so.
• 18:58
  I The funny thing about it is I'm about to get married at that
• 19:03
  point and so again, tell my wife all about that.
• 19:06
  We finally realise what the root is of all this.
• 19:08
  Go see the doctors. Yep, it's confirmed.
• 19:10
  This is what's happened. Blah, blah blah blah blah.
• 19:12
  They were mortified about it. You know the fact that wasn't
• 19:15
  enough monitoring XYZ. And I'm giving a really long
• 19:18
  answer here, but I think it's important to have everybody sort
• 19:21
  of clued in because your past does not need to dictate your
• 19:24
  future. That's a really important thing
• 19:26
  that I think anybody, you know, if you've made a mistake, you've
• 19:29
  said something, you've done something, you did what you knew
• 19:32
  how to do, given the circumstances of your life,
• 19:35
  would you do it now? No, probably not.
• 19:38
  So again, be gentle with yourself.
• 19:41
  So then literally how everything was dealt with.
• 19:45
  And then it was, it wasn't just a case of a quiet conversation,
• 19:47
  it was a case of right, we're going to put this before a board
• 19:49
  of inquiry. We've got to drag you over the
• 19:51
  colds. We're going to do this.
• 19:52
  We're going to make an example of you, basically.
• 19:55
  And I know I'm I'm 99.9% certain that my boss added fuel to the
• 20:02
  fire every conversation he had with me.
• 20:06
  Again, it it was to do with this.
• 20:08
  It was you know there was a lot of stuff that was going on.
• 20:12
  So I have the conversation. I sit there and I sat with the
• 20:14
  Bible on my lap because I thought if if we're going to
• 20:17
  play this, I'm not your buddy, I'm not your friend.
• 20:19
  And I'm realising this because the support that I needed and my
• 20:22
  wife needed wasn't there. So what you will actually get is
• 20:27
  a very serious very business version on myself because I now
• 20:30
  need to protect myself because I'm it.
• 20:31
  It's like it's like you're Rocky going in against club of Lang
• 20:35
  you know that you you're going to have punches coming from
• 20:37
  everywhere and they wanted to to embarrass and was like well I
• 20:42
  think we need to read the messages.
• 20:43
  I was like does everybody here know what what's been said.
• 20:45
  I was like yeah well I don't need to know what's so and said
• 20:47
  I know why I'm here, roughly. I know it isn't good.
• 20:50
  That's all I need to know. But you're going to get the
• 20:52
  truth. And I gave them the truth.
• 20:54
  I was like, she's done this. She's done that, blah, blah,
• 20:57
  blah, blah, blah. This ties up all this, that and
• 20:58
  the other and. And it was a, you know, it was
• 21:02
  an embarrassing situation, everything like that.
• 21:04
  But what I realized going forward was a lot of the things
• 21:08
  that I was meant to be promised in terms of, you know, we'll,
• 21:11
  we'll take care of you, we'll look after you and everything
• 21:14
  else. It didn't exist.
• 21:16
  So I leave the church. There was this sort of you know
• 21:19
  half heartfelted gesture basically that they gave them
• 21:22
  whatever. I was like OK, we took a break
• 21:26
  and my in laws who are very very very much into the church were
• 21:32
  pissed. The fact now I don't often swear
• 21:35
  on on shows or or publicly but they were pissed.
• 21:37
  The fact that we were not going to church and I was the reason
• 21:40
  for it, you know, you know that they, it had been a very
• 21:45
  difficult relationship and I tried to explain to them over
• 21:47
  and over and over again what had happened, but this one night in
• 21:51
  particular. Be clear, just interject, were
• 21:53
  they still going to that? Said Church.
• 21:56
  No, they went to a different. Church OK Yeah.
• 21:58
  Yeah. So they they chose, they chose
• 22:00
  to go to a different church because of all the OK, no, it it
• 22:03
  they they they'd already been going to a different church, but
• 22:05
  they chose to side with the church as the whole.
• 22:08
  Body The organization? Yeah, rather than having someone
• 22:11
  speak out against the church. So.
• 22:14
  So they're they're kind of in essence against you then.
• 22:17
  Yeah. Yeah, basically.
• 22:20
  And it did. I mean it it was 1 short step
• 22:23
  away from from some sweet chip music literally.
• 22:27
  Because it it, it got really volatile, like unbelievably so.
• 22:33
  And one word or or one sentence really, for my father-in-law,
• 22:39
  you know, it changed everything between us.
• 22:42
  It it, it really taught everything that was there.
• 22:44
  Because of all the people that I knew, I expected him to be the
• 22:48
  one that at least would be in my corner, you know, and at least
• 22:51
  would listen. And he felt that I was being
• 22:54
  preachy. I really felt I was being this,
• 22:55
  that and the other anyway. And I was like, I'm trying to
• 22:58
  explain to you why we're not going.
• 23:00
  And he's like, well, it's not a good enough reason not to go to
• 23:02
  church. I was like, OK, so you've been
• 23:05
  mentally abused for six years. You know, this, that and the
• 23:07
  others happened, and you want me to go to the very place that at
• 23:11
  that time I was the most terrified of.
• 23:13
  Again, PTSD. Didn't know at the time, but I
• 23:16
  was suffering enormously from it.
• 23:19
  So I wasn't even thinking clearly.
• 23:20
  There was nothing, really. So basically my wife and I were
• 23:24
  alone. Fast forward.
• 23:26
  I don't know how long, but we ended up going to another
• 23:28
  church, which was very superficial.
• 23:30
  We told us right at the beginning we we, you know, love
• 23:33
  people, but we're very superficial.
• 23:35
  What does that mean? Basically, we are very surface
• 23:38
  level. We will smile at you, but if
• 23:40
  you've got a problem, we don't really care.
• 23:43
  And they told you that? Yeah, yeah.
• 23:45
  But why? What?
• 23:47
  Well, I mean, this was a minister that also told me about
• 23:49
  his undescended testicle about other people within the church
• 23:53
  having struggles with pregnancy, you know, and you.
• 23:57
  Think. What do you mean?
• 23:58
  Oh, like, hey, we're a church, but like, we're full of shit.
• 24:00
  Like basically, yeah, yeah, we suck at discipleship and we suck
• 24:07
  at or or. We're very superficial.
• 24:09
  I think is basically what he what he said.
• 24:11
  At least he's honest, I suppose. At least he's honest, yeah.
• 24:14
  So you know what you're going into and.
• 24:15
  You know what you're going to get.
• 24:17
  Yes, he he was. He was right.
• 24:19
  You know, you're struggling. Everything is going on.
• 24:21
  You're piled up to the brain. I had a calcium deposit in my
• 24:24
  left shoulder that needed injecting with that same
• 24:27
  Prednisolone injection. So I'm completely stoned out of
• 24:30
  my head for probably close to a year, 2017.
• 24:33
  I don't remember very much much of at all.
• 24:37
  So, you know, there's a lot of serious stuff that's going on.
• 24:39
  They didn't want to know. We ended up leaving and I think
• 24:43
  it was my wife's first realisation that, Oh my
• 24:45
  goodness, this is actually happening.
• 24:47
  This isn't just John being paranoid.
• 24:49
  And the way that I look at it is, if somebody's paranoid,
• 24:52
  there's a reason for it. Again, Nothing ever just
• 24:56
  happens, you know, as much as people want to kid themselves,
• 25:00
  it never, ever just happens. There is always something
• 25:04
  somewhere, even if it's a small, tiny fragment that has led to
• 25:07
  this one incident. So basically, we didn't go
• 25:12
  anywhere for it for a long time. We did eventually find friends
• 25:15
  when I was running the art class that again I suspect we're
• 25:19
  friends with us because they want to try and get us into the
• 25:22
  church as soon as we stepped away when COVID happened, this
• 25:25
  sort of we'll just kind of leave them to their own thing kind of.
• 25:28
  And it was really sad because it's like your trust again has
• 25:31
  been betrayed almost. But yeah, I find it that the
• 25:37
  more that I think about because I think obviously a lot about
• 25:39
  different stuff. I'm like the last modern day
• 25:41
  philosopher, you know. And it's just, I see it as often
• 25:45
  times as a place of control, a place where a lot of times
• 25:50
  people will use as a crutch. There's there's a lot of amazing
• 25:54
  people in there, don't get me wrong.
• 25:55
  But people of our age, quite frankly, the majority I've found
• 25:58
  to be assholes. That's the only word I can use
• 26:01
  to describe, you know. And another thing about this as
• 26:04
  well is like, you're not the first person who's ever said
• 26:06
  this to me. Like, I I I met a guy years ago
• 26:09
  who had a similar experience that he worked in like the admin
• 26:13
  side of a church. And I was also just intrigued
• 26:16
  that there was this like these normal positions that oh, you
• 26:18
  can be like. Work in the office at the
• 26:20
  church. And yeah, like there there's
• 26:21
  still business stuff that has to be, you know, because.
• 26:25
  But you make no, make no mistake about it, it is a church.
• 26:27
  The Jesus is the product. Getting books on seats is the
• 26:31
  goal. Like it or not folks.
• 26:33
  It might be controversial, but it's true.
• 26:35
  And I've I saw that when I've worked for the church.
• 26:37
  I saw that when I was a hardcore Christian.
• 26:40
  I still say the same thing. Now you know it.
• 26:43
  It's. But again, everything is divine.
• 26:46
  Everything worked out for me, at least for good, but it took a
• 26:50
  long time to really get over it. And like you say, I'm not the
• 26:55
  only person that's that's discovering this.
• 26:57
  Yeah and like when he when he described it to me, he sort of
• 27:00
  said that the the similar experiences to to what you're
• 27:03
  outlining like this idea that like there's politics involved
• 27:08
  in it. And it kind of goes back to what
• 27:09
  we said much earlier in the show.
• 27:11
  This idea that you know everything's a work, it's
• 27:13
  fakeness. It's like, yeah, you know, we
• 27:16
  all love each other and and you know, we're all.
• 27:18
  To hear for each other, but actually when you need help,
• 27:21
  fucking part of my language. But like, that's the attitude
• 27:24
  that you receive and it's like that's not very what it's all
• 27:29
  about. No, no, I mean, again, it goes
• 27:32
  back to that whole thing and it and it is really interesting.
• 27:34
  Even when I was studying at theological college I left off
• 27:37
  the second year. But I was told by a very very
• 27:40
  good friend of mine it was a good job you left when you did
• 27:43
  because third and 4th year was about the business of the
• 27:46
  church, how to run the business of the church.
• 27:49
  And he was basically told, and this is a little lesson for you,
• 27:52
  everybody that's listening to this never ever put your life in
• 27:55
  another person's hands, especially a professional life
• 27:58
  because he went through four years of a doctrine, sorry, of a
• 28:02
  of a degree programme only to find at the end or we don't
• 28:06
  think your minister material. Wow.
• 28:09
  Really? Yeah.
• 28:10
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 28:11
  What did he do? You know what he did after that?
• 28:13
  Like how he. I mean.
• 28:15
  Well, so much of his life has invested in that.
• 28:16
  Yeah. His, his wife is a teacher.
• 28:18
  He still does what we call lay preaching.
• 28:20
  So he preaches around different churches from time to time.
• 28:23
  But he didn't do anything, you know, I think he was absolutely
• 28:25
  shattered to, to be honest of of what happened.
• 28:28
  He's looked since for other opportunities and he's funny
• 28:31
  enough, the church that we left for being superficial.
• 28:34
  He was like, I'm thinking of replying to this church and I'm
• 28:36
  like, brother, don't do it, don't do it.
• 28:40
  It is, yeah. You also, and I found this fun
• 28:45
  because I I live in Manchester and you briefly lived in
• 28:48
  Manchester before eventually settling in Scotland.
• 28:51
  And you described you described this experience as a disaster.
• 28:55
  So I wanted to know, so when did you live in Manchester and why
• 28:58
  was it a disaster? So it was First Wood in
• 29:02
  Manchester where I was meant to be going on placement for a sort
• 29:07
  of a Christian gap year. It's basically, you know, to to
• 29:10
  get people away, to get them experienced either in youth,
• 29:13
  work or the life of the church, if that's what they're looking
• 29:15
  at going into. And they thought that Manchester
• 29:19
  would be a really good place for me to be so.
• 29:23
  When, when would this have been? Gosh, I want to say I was maybe
• 29:29
  1920, so you're looking maybe about 20 O 8, maybe 2000 and
• 29:36
  eight 2009 something around that time, maybe even earlier than
• 29:38
  that. Let me let me before they sent
• 29:40
  you on this placement, did they mention anything about
• 29:43
  punishment or just like you're in trouble?
• 29:46
  Or maybe maybe they should have done especially what followed.
• 29:52
  Because my, it was my minister at the time.
• 29:54
  That was just like, oh, I still think it'd be really good for
• 29:56
  you. Even though the night before I'd
• 29:58
  left there was there was a murder.
• 30:02
  Oh my gosh. What happened was the victim and
• 30:06
  the assailant obviously ran through the back gardens of the
• 30:11
  houses, basically where we're staying, and he's wielding a
• 30:14
  knife and everything. So I arrived in Manchester, you
• 30:17
  know, very green in many ways, not knowing the ways of the
• 30:21
  world a lot, and instantly thrown into this world.
• 30:24
  And I was told that, you know, and it wasn't by the minister
• 30:28
  that told me this. He was very nice to me and very
• 30:30
  happy. And you know, again, we'll touch
• 30:33
  on this a little bit later because he true he reveals his
• 30:36
  true colours. Shall we see?
• 30:39
  So basically I I meet what's called the church Superintendent
• 30:43
  and it's basically like your Sunday school leader.
• 30:45
  Yeah, it it it's Church of Scotland or Church of England,
• 30:49
  as it would have. Been CSI Church or the DCSI
• 30:51
  Church, but I was literally like, OK, this is, this is
• 30:55
  interesting. So he sits me down.
• 30:58
  I was, I was in a relationship at the time and he's like we're
• 31:01
  going to lay out some ground rules, you know.
• 31:04
  You know, bear in mind I've just come out of bodybuilding.
• 31:06
  OK. I've got to set that preface.
• 31:07
  OK. I've done MMA.
• 31:09
  I'm, you know, I'm fairly able to take care of myself.
• 31:11
  But he basically says a couple of different things.
• 31:13
  He was like, one, you're going to need to learn how to ride a
• 31:14
  bicycle and second of all you're going to want to have either an
• 31:17
  old fashioned cudgel, which is basically a Victorian pole, what
• 31:21
  they would have used in the sort of the 1930s for police
• 31:25
  officers. Trojan.
• 31:27
  A Trojan. Like a Trojan.
• 31:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And basically you don't stop.
• 31:32
  Now I'm going to Manchester and I'm thinking.
• 31:34
  Hold on, let's let's just set the scene for this a second.
• 31:36
  So a church minister? Oh, no, this this was the
• 31:40
  Superintendent. I got OK.
• 31:42
  Someone high up in the church is telling you that you need to.
• 31:45
  When you go out and you run your errands and do the Lord's work,
• 31:49
  you have to be on a bicycle with a Trojan, yeah.
• 31:52
  Potentially to to protect yourself and hit other people
• 31:55
  with Yeah. To to literally.
• 31:57
  Or you could take a Bible bashing to a whole new level.
• 32:00
  You. Know you get the amplified
• 32:01
  version, you get serious damage with that, yeah.
• 32:04
  Oh well, Oh my gosh. Did they suggest that as well?
• 32:06
  No, no. But what came out afterwards
• 32:09
  was, I know you're in a relationship with this girl.
• 32:13
  If she comes to stay, you're not going to be sleeping in the same
• 32:16
  bed and you're not going to be doing this and you're not going
• 32:18
  to be doing that. And I'm like, first of all, I'm
• 32:21
  not three years old. And basically his ending
• 32:24
  statement was, you know, well, we'll hug and make up, but I'll
• 32:28
  take you out into the car park and I'll kick the out of you.
• 32:32
  And you're thinking, OK, this is the first time I've met this
• 32:34
  guy, you know, and you're like, wow, you know, even with
• 32:38
  colitis, you know, I'm, I'm fairly certain I could have, you
• 32:41
  know, held my own against this guy even now.
• 32:44
  But it was so bizarre. And I'm thinking, OK, is this
• 32:47
  sort of the first, you know, first sort of weird thing?
• 32:51
  So I was really taken back by that And all the way through the
• 32:55
  the weekend again, you know, divinely feeling something's not
• 32:59
  right here. I'm not meant to be here.
• 33:01
  And you know, when you're meant to be in a police, you just, you
• 33:04
  just know, you know that there is, there's an ease about it.
• 33:07
  There's usually a piece about it, even if you go into World
• 33:09
  War 2, you know, if you're meant to be there, you will feel a
• 33:13
  relaxed, oddly enough, peace and calmness about this.
• 33:16
  Like I'm meant to be where I am. Did it hit you straight away or
• 33:20
  was it just. Yeah, yeah, yeah, straight away,
• 33:22
  yeah, seconds. I got off the, I got off the the
• 33:25
  train. I went to see the minister and
• 33:30
  you know, as soon as he's dragged me around, you know, he
• 33:32
  said one phrase. And immediately I was just like
• 33:37
  this is possibly not the the, the right place.
• 33:39
  Maybe a lot of people in the church on that Sunday were
• 33:42
  really nice, really friendly. But you know, again, they tried
• 33:46
  to hand me into making a decision really, really quick.
• 33:50
  And one of my golden rules is if somebody tries to force you
• 33:53
  really, really quickly, don't do it because that's what the
• 33:57
  design, that's what marketers basically do.
• 33:59
  So Ioma now and I'm just like I I felt that many was pressured
• 34:04
  to go there from a minister from several other people in my home
• 34:08
  church and things. And I was like this is just not,
• 34:11
  you know, it's it's so eventually I, as they say, I put
• 34:15
  my big boy pants on. You know I basically grabbed my
• 34:17
  grapefruits with both hands and I emailed him and I said, Ross
• 34:20
  sorry, you know I I just don't think this is for me.
• 34:24
  And it took me like 2 weeks to make the decision.
• 34:27
  The first part of the e-mail comes back very, very nicely,
• 34:29
  which was, you know, well, after two weeks of not hearing from
• 34:32
  you, I kind of did start to wonder, you know, And then he,
• 34:36
  the rest of his e-mail, he blows up.
• 34:37
  You know, you've done this. You've done that.
• 34:40
  You've cost us this. You know how we meant to get
• 34:42
  someone now? And I'm like, God, I was right
• 34:44
  all along or you showed me, you know, it was right all along not
• 34:48
  to be there. I then get a another phone call
• 34:52
  from the the company called Care Force who deal with all the kind
• 34:56
  of placement stuff and whatnot about going to Scotland.
• 34:59
  And it was AS Scotland. And I was just like never heard
• 35:02
  of it, never been there before. As soon as I got there, I knew
• 35:05
  right away that I was like, this is where I'm meant to be.
• 35:09
  What was different? The feeling, the emotion, the
• 35:12
  energy that was there. It certainly wasn't the people
• 35:15
  and I guarantee it definitely wasn't people because I found
• 35:18
  some of the most difficult people on this journey were were
• 35:23
  based in Scotland, you know and and the Scottish church is very
• 35:27
  different from from the English church in a lot of ways.
• 35:31
  That is a differ. I think in some ways the the the
• 35:35
  Scottish people can be more stoic, particularly the the
• 35:39
  older people. So the more not standoffish, the
• 35:42
  more reserved, the more you know, well, if you do this,
• 35:46
  we're going to tell you. And you know any area you think
• 35:49
  I've literally defecated all of the Bible, You know, it was, it
• 35:52
  was ultimate severity to the point you're terrified to do
• 35:55
  anything. Whereas up here I still have
• 35:59
  that fear, but not for as many people, you know, it was, it was
• 36:02
  very different, but it was the feeling of like coming home and
• 36:06
  being here. I found the same thing when I
• 36:09
  went to Italy, when there was a number of things going on.
• 36:12
  I was like I just love I love being in Italy so that yeah
• 36:16
  there was a lot of things that were going on for for sure at
• 36:18
  the time. But I I in in a suppose a more
• 36:22
  recent interview you know I was asked you know do you think
• 36:25
  there's ever a time that we'll see you back in the church.
• 36:27
  I said never say never, but the chances are probably not because
• 36:30
  I've gone beyond, I've transcended beyond the the
• 36:33
  church. And I think quite honestly if a
• 36:37
  lot of people who are seeking genuine spirituality and to seek
• 36:43
  to to seek genuine spiritual growth, I think sometimes the
• 36:47
  best thing is something like a COVID, you know where you are at
• 36:51
  home, you can't go out and it's just you, you know and you don't
• 36:56
  get so hooked up in. Well, I got to do this
• 36:58
  theological. I got to do that theological,
• 37:00
  you know, on and on and on. Yeah, really speaking on on my
• 37:03
  show, I don't talk politics and and religion, but like I I will
• 37:07
  kind of allow for it in certain instances like and and you know
• 37:12
  that line. It's always a tricky one.
• 37:15
  But I think the important thing to stress with this I will, I
• 37:18
  will talk on this for a second. I've always seen religion as as
• 37:22
  quite like a a personal thing. Yes.
• 37:25
  And you know, because they say sometimes that you can't ask
• 37:28
  about someone's income, you can't ask about their religion,
• 37:31
  and you do, like very personal people still do.
• 37:34
  Sure, Yeah. And I always look at it like
• 37:39
  there always seems to be these rules that aren't rules.
• 37:42
  Like, who says that you have to go to a church or a mosque or a
• 37:45
  synagogue to follow your religion?
• 37:48
  Who says that you have to follow each and every rule in this book
• 37:51
  so stringently like I think? More people should embrace this
• 37:56
  idea that you can follow things that feel right for you.
• 38:02
  Like I had a really, really amazing chat with a with a
• 38:05
  Muslim guy on the street the other day and he was like one of
• 38:08
  the first Muslims that I've met that was like truly open minded
• 38:13
  and wasn't trying to like convert me or anything like
• 38:16
  that. He was just talk.
• 38:18
  We're talking. We're talking about life.
• 38:19
  We're talking about. Belief systems, we go back and
• 38:22
  forth. It was fun and and it it really
• 38:25
  felt refreshing. And I remembered saying to him
• 38:31
  that like I keep an open mind to all religions and I pick and
• 38:36
  choose things like I'm, I'm spiritual, that's kind of where
• 38:38
  I'm at. But like I I pick and choose and
• 38:41
  I have my own sort of beliefs. And he sort of caught me at one
• 38:45
  point. He was like, well, if you're
• 38:46
  truly. And you'll consider this.
• 38:48
  And I was like, yeah, you're right.
• 38:49
  You got me. All right.
• 38:50
  I'll look into it. And I took the information and
• 38:53
  you know, and I've read a little bit here and there and I take
• 38:56
  what from what it from what I want.
• 38:58
  But I guess what I'm trying to say with this is that wherever
• 39:03
  you are, whatever your situation is, however you feel about
• 39:06
  religion one way or another, like don't feel pressured, like
• 39:09
  taking take a leaf out of out of John's book here.
• 39:13
  Don't feel pressured. To have to do these things like
• 39:18
  it should be something that feels right for you.
• 39:20
  Like if you have an interest in this, pursue it, see, see where
• 39:23
  it leads you, see if it feels right, You know, don't feel the
• 39:27
  peer pressure of a particular group who are pushing you into
• 39:30
  it because maybe that's that's not for you.
• 39:32
  You know, like, and I'm not even saying that.
• 39:35
  The reverse is not a good thing either.
• 39:36
  I'm I'm sure there and I've seen there are many churches and
• 39:41
  organisations and stuff that that are good and well run and
• 39:44
  and and it all comes down. That's the thing.
• 39:45
  It all comes down to the people, you know, it's yeah, it's always
• 39:50
  the people there that make or break a situation, be it a
• 39:53
  church, a workplace, other sort of organization.
• 39:57
  It's the people that make the place.
• 40:00
  It is and and that's the. Thing you know, you, you, you've
• 40:03
  always to remember the stuff that I'm sharing tonight,
• 40:06
  obviously it's from my journey, you know, and I and I said this
• 40:09
  is so many people. It's like your journey is not my
• 40:12
  journey. You know, For me, I found when I
• 40:15
  didn't have you know again the feeling of the church breathing
• 40:19
  down my neck that I could study, you know, the Bunny Sapfas, the
• 40:23
  Bhagavad Gitas. You know various religions and
• 40:26
  and and textbooks. All of the you know all of the
• 40:28
  world. You know, and and I love to
• 40:31
  study. I mean, I really just enjoy that
• 40:33
  rather than being told, well, no, if you're going to study,
• 40:36
  you need to study just, you know, Christian truth.
• 40:39
  And it's like, why? So do you think that God is just
• 40:42
  limited to to, you know, being a Christian?
• 40:44
  Yeah. It's like that blows people's
• 40:46
  mind when you tell them that God isn't a Christian.
• 40:48
  And he's like, oh, well, well, he has to be.
• 40:49
  He has to be. He's like, why?
• 40:51
  Why? Well, you know, I remember once
• 40:53
  my dad said to me, and I'll never forget this, he said that
• 40:56
  all religions are connected and they're all part of the same
• 40:59
  thing. And it kind of it, like, blew my
• 41:02
  mind to even hear that. I was like, wait, are you saying
• 41:04
  they're like pieces of the same puzzle?
• 41:06
  And he's like, yeah, well, I'll say the whole thing about.
• 41:08
  It that you you can almost again scientifically take this to the
• 41:11
  bank at one point. We all travel together as human
• 41:14
  beings, you know, and it was literally you chose to go north,
• 41:17
  I chose to go east. And that's where the first
• 41:20
  separation came. And then it happened over and
• 41:22
  over and over and over again. People forgot that.
• 41:24
  And now we're at war with people.
• 41:26
  Who wants, you know, we would have sat down and broken bread
• 41:29
  with, you know what I love? You know again what you said
• 41:32
  there, Christian, you know again about being open to everything.
• 41:34
  That is really key. Have a mind that's open to
• 41:36
  everything and close nothing, because you'll find actually
• 41:39
  just being open enough even to explore just for yourself.
• 41:42
  You don't need to involve anybody else, just explore for
• 41:44
  yourself. You'll be amazed at what comes
• 41:46
  along on your path. You know, and again, if
• 41:49
  something comes along that you think don't really like that,
• 41:51
  imagine it as a as a boulder. You can put that down anytime
• 41:54
  you want. And when I learnt that with my
• 41:56
  past experiences, you know that was so freeing.
• 42:00
  You know I don't need to hold this anymore.
• 42:01
  At any point I'm free to choose who the heck I want to be.
• 42:04
  If I want to be a wrestler, go be a wrestler.
• 42:06
  If I want to be a best selling author, go be a best selling
• 42:08
  author. You you're creating it, you
• 42:10
  know, why not beautiful. One more question, just to kind
• 42:16
  of close the whole religious chapter of this.
• 42:20
  So what would you? Say was like the craziest or
• 42:24
  weirdest interaction that you had or experience that you had.
• 42:28
  Like we've already outlined some sort of like quite traumatic
• 42:31
  experiences, but was there anything that you ever kind of
• 42:34
  looked at you like that's bizarre?
• 42:35
  What the hell was that? Oh, there's many things that I
• 42:38
  looked at and was. Bizarre.
• 42:39
  The first, then probably the one that always comes to mind when
• 42:42
  when I'm asked that question. Is that there was a.
• 42:46
  How do I? Phrase this there was.
• 42:48
  A church goer, Let's put it like that.
• 42:50
  As a church goer. I've been speaking at a meeting.
• 42:57
  I think it was possibly in Troon.
• 42:59
  And we're sat there. We're waiting on the.
• 43:01
  Church and all of a sudden this church goer comes up and he is
• 43:04
  loaded up on something like and it ain't the Holy Spirit.
• 43:08
  And he basically said, you know, when when the train comes, we're
• 43:11
  going to jump in front of the train.
• 43:12
  Oh my God. And we're going to trust God is
• 43:14
  going to pass us through the train.
• 43:15
  Almost like the the old film. I think it's the holy man and
• 43:20
  Steve is it Steve. Paul Hogan, I think it is.
• 43:22
  It's filmed back from the 80s. He's basically dead.
• 43:25
  And he passes through this bus and all sorts of other stuff
• 43:28
  happened. And it literally, I mean, he was
• 43:31
  wanting me to jump, you know, on on, you know, in front of this
• 43:33
  train and whatever. And he was.
• 43:35
  He was willing to go for it, man.
• 43:36
  And I was just like, no, I think I'm good because the Lord ain't
• 43:40
  calling me to do that tonight, you know, maybe another night.
• 43:42
  But for tonight I'm good. Got on the train and he stood
• 43:46
  there. And I mean, I've I've again, you
• 43:48
  know, when people say there's only one spirit, there's only
• 43:50
  one energy and things like that. Honestly, I mean, I've seen the
• 43:54
  devil in people, you know, you see it in their eyes and it's
• 43:56
  just a glimpse. And he stood there that night on
• 44:00
  that train track and he is watching me.
• 44:02
  And I'm thinking. This is weird.
• 44:07
  Like, really, really weird. That's probably one of always,
• 44:11
  probably one of the ones that comes to mind when when we get
• 44:14
  into that there have been others, you know that they
• 44:16
  again, walking up the street, somebody looks at you and it's
• 44:19
  just it's for a brief moment it looks like their eyeballs are
• 44:22
  hollowed out. And to a lot of people you know,
• 44:24
  they'll hear this and like, what the heck is this you mean?
• 44:26
  OK, let's explore this for a second.
• 44:28
  You mean like black? Like because you said you saw
• 44:31
  the the devil and people like, yeah, I haven't seen.
• 44:34
  That in years, I mean, I tend not to go out all that much now,
• 44:38
  but yeah, I I mean, I I've seen that, seen that a number of
• 44:40
  times. What do you make of that?
• 44:42
  Do you think that person's like possessed or something only?
• 44:46
  God knows, but it was also the energy.
• 44:49
  That came with that person as well.
• 44:51
  It was a very cold, unsettling energy.
• 44:54
  It was like, it was like, again quoting Harry Potter.
• 44:58
  It was like all the joy had been sucked out of the the street.
• 45:01
  It was frightening. Yeah.
• 45:04
  Jesus, Literally. Well, I mean, I personally don't
• 45:08
  believe in in God. Like that's where I'm at.
• 45:11
  But like, I I do believe in something.
• 45:13
  And the closest experience I've had to this, I don't know that
• 45:16
  I've ever told this story before.
• 45:19
  I was at university, I was in the library and there was this
• 45:24
  guy, basically me and my ex-girlfriend.
• 45:26
  It was a very toxic, horrible relationship.
• 45:30
  And we would always argue and often argue in public places,
• 45:33
  which was obviously really embarrassing for me.
• 45:35
  And and and it was, it was just horrible.
• 45:38
  Anyway, we're having an argument on the second floor of this
• 45:42
  library. You know, she gets up, she
• 45:46
  storms off. It's it's just a nightmare.
• 45:49
  But there was this guy there who I'd spoken to him a few times.
• 45:55
  I think he's a form of energy vampire, but like, not the
• 45:59
  classic one who talks your ear off.
• 46:00
  He's more like the type that kind of thrives on drama.
• 46:05
  Maybe drama vampire. I call it that anyway.
• 46:10
  I remember distinctly. When she walked off, I'm, I'm
• 46:16
  kind of, like figuring out my next step.
• 46:18
  And I just look up and I see him smirking, smiling.
• 46:21
  Like, like for those who are listening, like imagine the face
• 46:26
  of someone that's just kind of lapping up every second of this
• 46:31
  confrontation. Like even though it's been and
• 46:33
  gone, it's been very quick. Like, they're just like they
• 46:35
  they it's like they thrive off that horrible energy.
• 46:38
  And I would like, normally I'd just give someone a dirty look
• 46:41
  and feel, whatever. But I turned around to him.
• 46:42
  I was like, what the hell is your problem?
• 46:46
  And I think I'd, I'd swore at him or something and he, he kind
• 46:52
  of, you know, shunted back a little bit.
• 46:55
  But like, he still was kind of giggling like or like enjoying
• 46:59
  it. And I remember thinking in that
• 47:02
  moment, like this person's sick, that they enjoy that.
• 47:04
  Yeah. Yeah, but these people are out
• 47:06
  there and I don't know if if evil is necessarily the right
• 47:11
  word, but like you see it in people sometimes the the the
• 47:17
  more so. Like, I've never seen what you
• 47:19
  just said. That would terrify me.
• 47:20
  That's straight out of a horror movie.
• 47:21
  But I've seen like bad people and often it's more to do with
• 47:26
  like the fact that they thrive on drama, they get excited by
• 47:29
  drama. And I'm like, Oh no, that's not
• 47:30
  for me. And I I tend to like leave that
• 47:32
  situation if if someone's like that.
• 47:35
  But yeah, it's it's what do you make of a situation like that?
• 47:41
  Oh well. I mean when you.
• 47:43
  Really get into it. I mean, I discovered when I was
• 47:46
  certainly my last church that I felt like I was a sole reader in
• 47:50
  a much bigger business like I was.
• 47:52
  I was there. And I felt there's so many times
• 47:55
  when I've been in places I'm very much aware of me, how I'm
• 47:58
  feeling and the spirit within. And then I'm watching and
• 48:01
  feeling other people, not literally folks, We're going to
• 48:04
  clarify that as well. Don't want to get pulled up for,
• 48:06
  you know. And these days you've got to be
• 48:08
  careful for absolutely everything, you know, because
• 48:11
  you never know what people are going to piece together.
• 48:13
  But literally, you're feeling the energy of a room and you're
• 48:17
  like, Oh my goodness, this is. Well, let's speak to that for a
• 48:22
  second because you're saying the energy of room now.
• 48:25
  I think when most people, when they think of a church or
• 48:26
  something like that, they think, you know, and I've been into a
• 48:29
  few churches before, like for someone's wedding or
• 48:32
  confirmation or something, and it's just, it's just people
• 48:35
  singing hymns, maybe there's a little, I don't know, meeting
• 48:40
  afterwards. Everyone has lots of cheese and
• 48:41
  crackers or whatever, you know, like it's a lot of the time.
• 48:45
  It'll be nice, but you're saying the energy's off sometimes.
• 48:48
  Oh, yeah? Well, what do you what do you
• 48:50
  mean? By that so people have said to
• 48:51
  me but. It's a church, and that's where
• 48:53
  I thought you'd go with that. It's a church.
• 48:55
  It's the holiest place. Well, well, kind of like.
• 48:57
  Like, I mean, OK, I'm not playing the fool here.
• 49:01
  Like, even though we are all the fool, that's that's the true
• 49:05
  wisdom and knowledge of the universe.
• 49:06
  Yeah. But we see.
• 49:08
  Honestly, when you realise that, you realise everything.
• 49:10
  Oh yeah, but. Yeah, I mean the the, I mean,
• 49:15
  the whole point is it's supposed to be a form of comfort, a way
• 49:19
  to kind of guide people in life, stuff like that, like this.
• 49:23
  At its core, it's supposed to be a positive thing.
• 49:26
  Now obviously as we've sort of outlined in this show, very well
• 49:29
  that way isn't it we've we've. Outlined in this show I don't
• 49:35
  have any any lines. Christians, certainly when it
• 49:38
  comes to things like that, because I do know I.
• 49:41
  And it's not just, it's it's not just a suspicion.
• 49:43
  It's a knowing, you know, in some ways the church can be the
• 49:47
  best place that the devil deals is, is ultimate work.
• 49:50
  Because people go in there thinking, oh, I'm going to get
• 49:52
  spiritual guidance, I'm going to get this, I'm going to get that.
• 49:54
  What you often get is browbeating, judged, attacked,
• 49:58
  abused. Fill in the blank.
• 50:01
  But why do you think? That is, do you think it's like,
• 50:02
  oh, who can be the best religious person or or is it
• 50:06
  just like, do you think, OK, I guess what I'm really asking you
• 50:09
  is do you think the the structure in the system is
• 50:11
  actually causing people to act in that way?
• 50:15
  Absolutely. It's designed to.
• 50:16
  Do that, I mean, you know. When you really look at it, at
• 50:21
  its. Core Take the Church of
• 50:22
  Scotland, for example. Let's, let's break it down
• 50:24
  South. Church of Scotland I sat in a
• 50:27
  meeting many, many years ago. I was invited to it and it was
• 50:31
  regards to the Sunday School. They said the Sunday School just
• 50:33
  isn't growing, it's falling off. It's not the same as it was in
• 50:36
  the 1950s. And I was like, that's because
• 50:38
  it's 20, whatever. It was 151430, they concluded
• 50:43
  after about 2 1/2 hours, of which my opinion was asked very,
• 50:47
  very, you know, bluntly well. Now let's see what our youth
• 50:50
  worker thinks. And I said, well, the simple
• 50:52
  thing is. You know, are we building
• 50:54
  relationship with the parents? Because if you get the parents,
• 50:57
  you're going to get the children to it.
• 50:59
  The answer was no, we haven't done that in a while or
• 51:01
  whatever, but they ultimately concluded after. 2 1/2 hours.
• 51:07
  That the biggest problem with the Sunday school was the name
• 51:10
  of Sunday School. So what they actually came out
• 51:12
  with with let's call it school SKOOL and that will make it
• 51:17
  cool. Sunday schools cool.
• 51:20
  And they thought that was the problem.
• 51:22
  And you're thinking, OK, that's. One small example they tried to
• 51:28
  do a lot of stuff with in regards to our youth group and
• 51:30
  things. You know, we need to see your,
• 51:33
  you know, your lesson plans and things and there's like, I'd
• 51:35
  never do lesson plans, You know, that's not the way I operate at
• 51:39
  all. We want to see six months of
• 51:41
  them. Is there any wonder why short
• 51:43
  time later I left? Because when people start to
• 51:46
  control and micromanage everything, why do you think the
• 51:49
  church is dying? Why do you think literally, and
• 51:51
  what I mean by that, got to clarify, the church building,
• 51:54
  Why do you think the church buildings are dying?
• 51:57
  Churches all over here, there used to be hundreds and hundreds
• 52:00
  on every street. Now they're amalgamating into
• 52:03
  one. They're dying because they're no
• 52:05
  longer serving the needs of the public.
• 52:07
  Essentially, life coaching has become like the new church.
• 52:10
  Gary Vee as you is as your Bishop, and Tony Robbins is the
• 52:13
  Pope. You did make an argument there.
• 52:15
  Just interject for a second that technology is is largely
• 52:18
  changing that. I mean like you could do for
• 52:21
  example zoom meeting get together right.
• 52:25
  Like I imagine that right precisely.
• 52:28
  So technology has a part to play in this.
• 52:30
  That doesn't mean, Oh yeah, maybe it's transforming in a
• 52:32
  sense, I think it will go back to.
• 52:35
  What it used to be, which is the small family meetings that get
• 52:38
  togethers and things. But again, I and I would love to
• 52:41
  be able to sit here and say, you know.
• 52:44
  You know a lot of really great things about the church because
• 52:47
  for 15 years I worked in it and IA lot of it I loved.
• 52:51
  But unfortunately when you see master manipulators, when you
• 52:55
  see a lot of the dark stuff that's there first hand,
• 52:59
  initially you start questioning yourself.
• 53:00
  It's like you know, surely not, surely not.
• 53:02
  Couldn't be this, couldn't be this.
• 53:04
  And then you see it over and over and over, and not just in
• 53:07
  one church, but in multiples and multiples and multiples, and it
• 53:10
  goes on and on and on. And you're thinking, wow, what's
• 53:14
  the worst thing you ever saw? I would probably say mental
• 53:22
  abuse. So to extrapolate upon that
• 53:27
  over. Let's dive into that a little
• 53:31
  bit more. Dominating.
• 53:33
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. As in using that position to
• 53:37
  abuse. People.
• 53:38
  Yeah. Mentally, Yeah.
• 53:39
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 53:41
  I've also seen people's confession.
• 53:44
  In the Catholic Church and in the Episcopal Church, made into
• 53:46
  a sermon and then the minister looked directly over at the
• 53:49
  person. Yeah, yeah.
• 53:51
  Private conversations. For those who don't know as
• 53:53
  well, the confession is supposed to be like a confidential thing
• 53:57
  in the same as like doctors confidentiality.
• 54:03
  Yeah. Or psychological.
• 54:04
  Yeah. Therapists, confidentialities,
• 54:06
  etcetera. That's terrifying, man.
• 54:09
  That's that's outrageous. Yeah, and the thing.
• 54:13
  Is, you know, and it's changing now.
• 54:15
  But for a long time, a lot of people got away with whatever it
• 54:18
  is they were doing because the, you know, worked in the church,
• 54:23
  because they were a minister, because they were a vicar,
• 54:24
  because they were a reverent. And now it's not held with the
• 54:28
  same reverence as what it once was and people are.
• 54:31
  I mean, you look at it, you know, how the church has
• 54:36
  diminished greatly, I think has a lot to do as well with the
• 54:39
  family dynamics. So we're not spending as much
• 54:42
  time together as a family on the whole.
• 54:44
  And statistics show that. All of the the mental health
• 54:48
  battles and stories which I could speak for length on, you
• 54:52
  know, all of these different things that all interwoven.
• 54:56
  And when you see this happening over and over and over again,
• 55:00
  you know, I mean, I've seen people literally, you know?
• 55:03
  You know Sheffield had it. You know it.
• 55:05
  It was like the orgies. They would have orgies on
• 55:07
  Saturday night, stand up there and preach on Sundays.
• 55:09
  I was never at it. I got to clarify that to be
• 55:13
  clear when you say that, yeah, you got it in one, yeah.
• 55:18
  You mean act all? Yeah, they would open up the.
• 55:21
  Church on a Saturday night. Families would go in well,
• 55:26
  again, specify husband and wife, husband, husband, whatever.
• 55:29
  And it was basically like a free for all Oh my God, yeah, yeah.
• 55:34
  Now again, I got to stress this isn't for everyone because like
• 55:37
  you said, there are some genuine and there's a lot of amazing
• 55:40
  people out there. But I think the problem is, you
• 55:43
  know as as Tony Stark says, you know when you get something you
• 55:47
  starts out pure. It starts out innocent.
• 55:49
  It starts out as an amazing idea and a concept that people want
• 55:52
  to love and follow and get behind.
• 55:54
  And then unfortunately, the egos get in the way and God gets
• 55:57
  pushed out and people unfortunately confuse God,
• 56:01
  Divine Spirit. Concussion, whatever you want to
• 56:04
  phrase it as, as the church. And that's one of the biggest
• 56:08
  issues. That's why a lot of people turn
• 56:09
  around and say, well, I don't believe in God because if the
• 56:11
  church is a reflection of God, I don't want anything to do with
• 56:14
  it. And I can totally understand
• 56:16
  why. It's more of a reflection of the
• 56:18
  people though, isn't it? Goes back to what we said before
• 56:21
  that like the issue isn't the belief system necessarily, it's
• 56:26
  more to do with the people running the show and and like
• 56:28
  that that can happen with anything, anything, any
• 56:31
  situation like people can, but then the arguments always.
• 56:35
  Made. Well, no.
• 56:35
  Church is perfect, and the church is meant to set itself
• 56:38
  apart and all. You need to be gracious.
• 56:40
  But to me, being gracious doesn't mean negating what
• 56:43
  actually has happened, like what we talked about earlier on when
• 56:46
  I'm, you know, on that medication as high as I can and
• 56:48
  everything. The person who had been
• 56:51
  propositioning me for about 3 years at that point was a church
• 56:56
  leader. You know, it's like it's a huge
• 57:00
  abuse of power, like that's, but that's what I'm saying, you
• 57:02
  know, I mean that the you. Know without naming names, one
• 57:05
  of the the highest people in leadership you know was result.
• 57:10
  Directly, you know, a result of mental health and abusing and
• 57:14
  bullying and everything else you know and and.
• 57:19
  Why do you see that? Go on.
• 57:21
  So I introduced sort of. So I've seen that first.
• 57:24
  Hand, you know, that that's the thing a lot of people want to
• 57:26
  argue and say, oh, well, you know, it's all third party, you
• 57:29
  know, sort of hearsay. It's like, no, I've seen this
• 57:31
  first hand over 15 years. You know, the the minister in my
• 57:34
  home church battered and abused his wife.
• 57:36
  She became a stripper. You know, you can't make this
• 57:40
  stuff up. Wow.
• 57:42
  So, yeah. Why?
• 57:43
  Why do you think these these things keep happening and aren't
• 57:48
  kind of? Sort of investigated, dealt
• 57:52
  with, rooted out, etcetera. Like why, why is it?
• 57:54
  Are they allowed to happen? I think quite honestly.
• 57:57
  Because human beings as a whole have a really horrible ability
• 58:02
  of not learning from their lessons, I think.
• 58:06
  That's what it comes down to you.
• 58:08
  Know, I mean more specifically like.
• 58:10
  OK we've we've illustrated that in a lot of these instances it's
• 58:14
  been run by people and they're letting their power get you know
• 58:17
  their egos as you mentioned get to their heads and and they're
• 58:21
  you know allowing these awful things to happen where they
• 58:23
  shouldn't happen. Why do you think like in these
• 58:27
  organisations it keeps happening there and it hasn't been like
• 58:30
  say rooted out and and dealt with and and investigating.
• 58:35
  I mean I I don't know like you know that's the answer to that
• 58:37
  simple question. It's because the.
• 58:41
  Minister, if you, if you're liking it to a herd of bees or a
• 58:44
  herd of Wasps, you know it literally surrounds his or
• 58:48
  herself with ultimate protection.
• 58:51
  So in the Church of Scotland you have the Kirk session, which is
• 58:53
  30 or 40 people. In the big churches that are
• 58:57
  there designed to protect the minister, they are going to take
• 59:00
  the minister's word so. Much at face value.
• 59:05
  Over one person. Now they will have to
• 59:08
  investigate. Don't get me wrong, but.
• 59:10
  As we know, I mean, you know, you can do a limited
• 59:13
  investigation. And so we've investigated this.
• 59:16
  You know, I had an option after I left.
• 59:19
  And I remember again bath time. It was like I'm laid there and I
• 59:22
  was, I was so close. I'd written a letter to the Kirk
• 59:25
  session and I I just laid there and I was like, I need to send
• 59:28
  this, I need to, I need to do this.
• 59:30
  And again, it was like divine spirit from your voice from
• 59:33
  beyond whatever you want. It's like, I'm not going to tell
• 59:35
  you not to do this, but are you prepared for the kind of worms
• 59:38
  that this is going to open up? Are you prepared to go through
• 59:42
  what you would need to do for this person to see justice?
• 59:46
  And I just got to the point I was like no, because at that
• 59:49
  point I wasn't strong enough to deal with it.
• 59:51
  Now I would have a completely different answer and and I will
• 59:54
  have a completely different answer but there is more than
• 59:57
  one way to skin a cat. Bear in mind, I'm an ultimate
• 59:59
  creative, so there's a lot of different ways to to you know
• 1:00:03
  to. Just kind of deal with these
• 1:00:05
  things. But I think it hasn't happened
• 1:00:07
  because again, people often times don't speak up.
• 1:00:09
  If they do speak up, you know, that they're often shouted down,
• 1:00:14
  you know, and it's it's no surprise why the church is seen.
• 1:00:19
  I mean, historically the church has always been seen as a place
• 1:00:24
  of control and power. It's just been painted in a very
• 1:00:26
  different light. You go back far enough, I mean,
• 1:00:28
  Charlemagne, you know, basically would behead and burn anyone
• 1:00:32
  that didn't, you know, renounce their faith and become a
• 1:00:34
  Christian. You know, this isn't new what's
• 1:00:37
  happening. It's just certainly, it's it's a
• 1:00:44
  shame in a lot of ways. But again, it's it's, I said
• 1:00:48
  this to my wife the other day. I was like, when you actually
• 1:00:50
  break it down and everything, it's like the ultimate cult.
• 1:00:53
  It's like it's just grown to worldwide proportions.
• 1:00:58
  And there's like, you know, now because I don't have, like I
• 1:01:00
  said that filter and that line, I'm like, well, why can't I
• 1:01:04
  explore the fact that this could be happening or that could be
• 1:01:08
  happening again. Like I alluded to earlier on,
• 1:01:12
  you know, a friend of mine was in a pursuit of of spiritual
• 1:01:15
  truth, but they were only reading.
• 1:01:17
  And and I I said to them, I was like, well, what books are you
• 1:01:19
  reading? And and her and her husband
• 1:01:22
  politely said, you know, oh, we're reading, you know,
• 1:01:25
  everything, Christian. We're reading the Bible.
• 1:01:26
  We're reading this. I was like, ah, right.
• 1:01:27
  So you're in pursuit of Christian truth.
• 1:01:29
  And like, what do you mean? I was like, if you're in true
• 1:01:31
  pursuit of truth, you explore everything from every angle.
• 1:01:34
  And that's your life's work rather than just this one little
• 1:01:39
  branch where you missed the whole picture.
• 1:01:44
  Been a bit better myself, right? Let's let's let's end this all
• 1:01:49
  on on like a fun note because we've we've explored a lot of
• 1:01:53
  heavy stuff. I want to just say that massive
• 1:01:55
  thank you for exploring that with us and I know it's always
• 1:01:59
  quite heavy when. You explore topics.
• 1:02:02
  Like this stuff, you've been through it, so it takes its toll
• 1:02:04
  on you. And I want to kind of enjoy it
• 1:02:06
  because it's not often that I get asked these kind of
• 1:02:08
  questions, which is super nice. So I really, really appreciate
• 1:02:11
  it. Thank you, Sir.
• 1:02:14
  I ask every guest these questions.
• 1:02:16
  I'd love to get your response. What's the biggest mistake
• 1:02:19
  you've made that you learned a valuable life lesson from?
• 1:02:25
  Wear a helmet when you're riding a skateboard on concrete.
• 1:02:32
  I can attest to this. I used to do.
• 1:02:33
  Skateboarding years ago, Yeah. It blows my mind how.
• 1:02:38
  And this is the thing. When you're a teenager, you're
• 1:02:41
  like, Oh yeah, I don't need a helmet.
• 1:02:42
  I remember thinking that. And then you hear about that one
• 1:02:45
  kid that didn't, and now they're in a wheelchair the rest of
• 1:02:48
  their life, or they're paralysed from the waist down or whatever.
• 1:02:51
  And it's like to wear a helmet. We we see the same with kids
• 1:02:54
  that are on bicycles and and all it needs is the chain to go, the
• 1:02:58
  spokes to go, something to go and you go, you know, flying
• 1:03:01
  over the top, yeah. That's, that's probably the
• 1:03:04
  number one that comes to a mind. I'll just say it as well on a
• 1:03:06
  side note. Why do they make concrete skate
• 1:03:09
  parks and metal skate like when I was growing up it was all
• 1:03:12
  metal skate parks. There was a few wooden ones.
• 1:03:15
  Which wood is the best material to use it?
• 1:03:18
  Cushions to fall a bit? I mean, also because bubble wrap
• 1:03:21
  doesn't travel all that well, you know, you can't have a
• 1:03:23
  bubble wrap skate park. You've got to have something,
• 1:03:25
  you know? Yeah, but that's why Wood.
• 1:03:27
  Works best because like metal for example, during the summer
• 1:03:30
  I'm sure you had this issue as. Well, like if you lay down in
• 1:03:33
  it, boom, you're going to burn when you fall over on that,
• 1:03:35
  yeah. It, it conducts heat, obviously.
• 1:03:38
  And with concrete, I mean, what need I say more?
• 1:03:41
  I yeah, I ended up basically. I I think I was maybe about 10
• 1:03:46
  or 11 and I still remember it to this day.
• 1:03:49
  I still remember the skateboard, but I ended up smashing the back
• 1:03:52
  of my head. I mean, I went up, went down,
• 1:03:55
  and I ended up with an egg shell about the size of my fist on the
• 1:03:58
  back of my head. Oh my gosh.
• 1:04:00
  You know, thankfully, apparently there wasn't any brain damage.
• 1:04:04
  You know, who knows? But yeah, that, that that was,
• 1:04:07
  that was, that was one of the first things that that come to
• 1:04:09
  my mind for sure, Yes. What's the best advice you've
• 1:04:14
  ever received? So again, the one that comes
• 1:04:18
  straight to mind has been one of the more recent ones with
• 1:04:21
  regarding with regarding writing the novel series and it's God
• 1:04:25
  may show you the entire plan of your life, It's up to you to do
• 1:04:27
  the work. He may lead you to the well, but
• 1:04:29
  it's up to you to drink. And what you find is that all
• 1:04:32
  the lessons that you have are great, but at some point, and
• 1:04:36
  this is the true meaning of a Buddha, you go back into the
• 1:04:39
  real world and you've got to apply them all.
• 1:04:43
  What's the biggest life lesson you've?
• 1:04:45
  Learned so far. Be very discerning who you open
• 1:04:50
  up to. Be very discerning who you allow
• 1:04:53
  into your inner core and don't assume everybody who smiles at
• 1:04:58
  you is going to be your friend. You know, I think one of the,
• 1:05:01
  the the sort of the takeaways of this really to to to sort of
• 1:05:05
  summarize all of that would be it's great if people come along
• 1:05:09
  to help you, but if they don't, you still need to be able to run
• 1:05:13
  your business yourself and you still need to be able to manage
• 1:05:15
  everything you do. It's on.
• 1:05:17
  You didn't agree? More man.
• 1:05:19
  Some really. Solid advice there.
• 1:05:21
  Final question for you, do you have any upcoming projects or
• 1:05:24
  final thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners?
• 1:05:26
  We We do indeed. So we've got a brand new novel
• 1:05:29
  series that's going to be coming out very, very soon.
• 1:05:31
  It's been under wraps for about 10 years.
• 1:05:33
  So everything's still in house. So when people tell me, you
• 1:05:37
  know, I've had this idea and I've been working out for six
• 1:05:39
  months and blah blah blah, and it's just as I, brother, sister,
• 1:05:43
  I've, I've been doing this for a decade.
• 1:05:44
  Trust me, you're holding that vision in your head for a decade
• 1:05:47
  and every day working towards it, then come back to me.
• 1:05:51
  So we've got that coming out very, very soon.
• 1:05:52
  There'll be more details to follow on the website about
• 1:05:54
  that. We've also got an upcoming
• 1:05:56
  podcast which has been delayed for a variety of reasons called
• 1:05:59
  Whispers of the Highlands, which will be sort of in conjuncture
• 1:06:03
  with with the new novel series. So that's super, super cool.
• 1:06:08
  If you love mystery and thriller and podcasts, it's done as only
• 1:06:11
  we can do it. You know, again, it's the most
• 1:06:13
  of experience. It's not just reading to you a
• 1:06:15
  story, it's it's literally as if you were there experiencing the
• 1:06:19
  whole thing and just our usual everyday stuff as well.
• 1:06:23
  So yeah, we're we're pretty busy.
• 1:06:26
  Thank you so much. For appearing on the show, John
• 1:06:28
  and be so generous of your time. I really, really appreciate it.
• 1:06:31
  I know. Pleasure, my friend.
• 1:06:32
  I hope we get to do it again at some point.
• 1:06:34
  I'd love. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:06:35
  You're always welcome back on the show.
• 1:06:38
  I had an absolute blast. Thank you so much.
• 1:06:40
  And to all the listeners of the Christian Reid podcast, I hope
• 1:06:43
  that you enjoyed this episode as much as I did.
• 1:06:46
  And yeah, quick reminder before we go, please.
• 1:06:49
  As I mentioned at the beginning, leave us a review on Pod Chaser,
• 1:06:53
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• 1:06:57
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• 1:07:01
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• 1:07:04
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• 1:07:14
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• 1:07:17
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• 1:07:19
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• 1:07:22
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• 1:07:29
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• 1:07:32
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• 1:07:35
  Thank you so much for listening and as always, until next time,
• 1:07:39
  I'll see you in the next one.