What's The Point Anyway?

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in financial markets and it was actually in the process of studying this that I really started to get interested in broader things like history, philosophy and faith. Anyone who is a skeptic and studies finance ultimately ends up being very interested in gold - the shiny yellow rock that has shaped empires for as long as man has been on the earth.

I reached out to Eric Yeung, a Hong Kong based gold & silver investor who is one of the most prominent content producers on the topic on the internet today. Eric was all too willing to join me for a very engaging discussion on the role of gold in the global financial system and how it may feature as we reach the end of the world as we know it.

For more of Eric's content, check out his X profile where he shares his analysis on a daily basis.

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This conversation was a long time coming, with my guest someone who I had been told I had to get on the show quite some time ago and we've just struggled to line up schedules.

Steve is someone who is the same as as me, but has lived a very full life - having spent time in prison in his early 20's after a long drug habit which became the turning point in his life. He's a proud MAGA American, but at the same time he's someone who is quite comfortable being critical of Trump and has a nuance in his perspectives around America that is so often missed. We had a really interesting discussion about the nature of patriotism and how different our perspectives are given our place of origin. We spoke a lot about how our theological interpretations influence our understanding of global events - particularly around ideas like evil, depravity of man and 'Satan'.

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As guests who have been listening to recent episodes have noticed, I'm in the midst of a deep dive into Catholicism, so my guest today was a well renowned Catholic apologist Elijah Yasi.

We started out by discussing how a Catholic faith impacts worldview and perspective on 'whats the point anyway' in a way which might be different to other Christian denominations. We delved into the complexities of church authority, the interpretation of early church writings, and the evolution of doctrine over centuries. We also discussed the role of church fathers, the implications of Vatican councils, and the centrality of the papacy in Catholicism versus Protestantism and Orthodoxy. In my opinion, the papacy is the central question when evaluating Catholicism's claims and this is an issue that Elijah has studied in great depth, so he was able to provide some perspectives that were highly insightful, particularly around the concept of unity in the Church.

Check out more of Elijah's content at his YouTube channel.

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I became friends with Chris a couple of years ago and since that time, the two of us have constantly been bouncing ideas and questions off each other. Chris, like me, is a full preterist Christian so we are very aligned in our views but I'd like to think we both approach things with a high level of curiosity which means we're always challenging our currently held positions.

This was a fun discussion which was centred around theology and the questions we're both grappling with. Chris spoke a lot about the Israel centric narrative of the Bible and his thoughts around what that means for us today as 21st Century Christians, how he formed his own views despite growing up as a pastors kid, and how he is currently re-examing his position on Calvinism. I shared my current conundrum of trying to work out the answers on the true identity of the Catholic Church and what I see as the limits on the sola scriptura philosophy.

Check out Chris on X to hear more from him.

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A few months ago a friend said to me that I need to reach out to this guy Greg Chacon, because he was a true unicorn in his theology with a crazy backstory. Greg lived as a gangster in his teenage years, getting kicked out of multiple schools and spending prolonged periods of time incarcerated. Then at 17 he began a journey of discover which ultimately led him to find God. In his worship of God, just like his life beforehand, he hasn't done anything in halves and is someone that you'd describe as being all in. He has a high opinion of personal experiences and despite holding to preterist eschatology where the common view on supernatural things like demons and spiritual gifts is that they ceased in 70AD, Greg has experienced and believes in things like speaking in tongues and casting out demons. He has extensive personal experience dealing with demons in exorcism situations, which to be honest is a practice that I myself am very skeptical of. In Christian circles, Greg can be quite controversial and he's never afraid of getting into a debate to reiterate his opinions.

However, this was a great discussion which went on for almost 2 hours because rather than denying Greg's experiences or trying to debate him on them, I tried to get a better understanding of what he believes and in doing so I learned a lot. 

Whether I ended up agreeing with Greg on everything is irrelevant, but I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to be blown away by the story of a man who has had a crazy journey and speaks from the heart about what he stands for.

Check out Greg's content at https://www.youtube.com/@PastorGreg1.

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Not that you'd hear about it in the mainstream news, but there's been lots of chatter over the past month about the release of the 'Epstein files' so I wanted to bring someone on to the show who could talk about that.

Jenn is a prominent voice online as a survivor of child sex trafficking and she was all too willing to share her story with me. Like my other recent guest Jessica Ella, Jenn suffered from trauma induced memory loss as a result of her experiences but over the past decade has begun to piece together her journey.

What she went through is unimaginable and shocking, yet given the high profile nature of it all she's yet to receive any sort of recognition from the events let alone justice.

I appreciate her coming on and telling her story and I hope in doing so, we can increase the awareness and get some justice.

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Craig Harper is somewhat of a local legend in my hometown of Melbourne and a man who hosts my mum's favourite podcast - The You Project. So as any good son would do, I reached out to him to get him on the show. Craig Harper is a successful businessman, speaker and podcaster - his current project has a whopping 1,830 episodes! He has spoken to all sorts of people, from celebrities to nobodies, and given the nature of his work he has a really valuable perspective on the question of what the point is anyway. He's 'looked under the hood' of so many people and is obsessed with the topic of human potential.

One thing that he's learned more than anything over time is how often he is wrong - this humility has helped him to grow in tolerance and open mindedness. I was really interested to chat to Craig about faith, because he grew up strict Roman Catholic and left the faith in his 30's and now identifies as agnostic. Unlike some ex-Christians, he remains open minded to Christianity so I enjoyed digging into what he does and doesn't believe and why.

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A couple of months back I was chatting with a good friend of mine who listens to the show about any guests that I should try to bring on, and her immediate answer was to reach out to Jessica Ella.

I'd never heard about Jess before, despite the fact that she lives locally but after listening to her story I agreed that I needed to chat to her!

She's only in her mid 30's, but may have had the most tumultuous and difficult first 30 years of any one I've ever spoken to. As she said during our chat, there were many times where she wondered whether the answer to what's the point is that there is none. Yet several years ago she underwent a transformative process to deal with the years of trauma and bring herself out the other side of it. Thankfully now, she's living her best version of her life and runs a successful healing practice along with several other things keeping her calendar full.

Just a warning - we do get into some very dark topics in this discussion including rape and significant sexual & emotional abuse.

I highly recommend checking out all of Jess's work via her Instagram and website.

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I reached out to Jim Ateoi (an alias) to come on the podcast after I had been following him on X for some time and found his perspectives quite novel and interesting.

Jim is a quintessential 'truther' and he's very focused on how the world of geopolitics and culture comes together, and he has strong views on the power structure that are the 'apex players' as he calls them. I love a good discussion on conspiracies, though I usually find myself sitting somewhere in the middle between normies who follow the evening news and people who believe in a lizard race that runs the world. We had a good chat about whether we're living through particularly interesting times, or whether groups seeking dominion is just a phenomenon thats existed since the beginning of history.

Jim isn't Christian and doesn't hold to any particular religious world view, so it was great to have a guest on who I agree with on a lot, but whose perspective is driven by very different influences to mine.

As I learned in the conversation, Jim is a computer programmer and you can certainly see his analytical and methodical mind at work during this chat.

You can follow more of his work at https://leagueofrealpeople.com/

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After interviewing Mesh Mesha on this podcast several weeks ago, I've been fascinated by how a Protestant Christian can become a Catholic. Catholicism gets a bad wrap in general, but as a 'Bible believing Christian' I've held a particular negative view towards the institution - having written about its deceptions and even spoken about them on this show many times.

Speaking to Mesh with an open mind has made me realise that some of my presuppositions are very wrong. Now this does not mean that I am all of a sudden a Catholic, but it has forced me to reevaluate my position with a fresh perspective.

Sean McMahon, therefore, was the perfect guest. He grew up more or less agnostic, with one Catholic parent and one Jewish parent. Pursuing his love of music, he spent his early 20's looking into things like mysticism and new age, before exploring his Jewish roots further and finding faith in Jesus due to his studies on the Book of Daniel. But just over a year ago, as he continued his study, he came to the view that the Catholic Church is indeed the true Church established by Jesus Christ in the first century.

We talked through his journey to get there, and what that means for him now.

Sean is a father of 2 (possibly now 3 with his 3rd child imminent) and is trying to make the move into full time ministry. Please support him by checking out all of his work - both in music and theology.

https://www.youtube.com/@realSeanMcMahon/videos

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1xiPmXZfm2DeEmCVYHXd20?si=g76PnePMSCiRBI4tuuYqRA&nd=1&dlsi=dc44833a6027411a

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