WEBVTT - DEBUNKING THE DEBUNKERS 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:19.730 My topic today is a fascinating one, the reliability of Scripture. 0:00:19.810 --> 0:00:21.530 As Christians, we revere the Bible. 0:00:21.590 --> 0:00:24.570 We consider it to be an inspired text. It's a 0:00:24.630 --> 0:00:27.710 recipe for life and also for life after life, life 0:00:27.790 --> 0:00:31.450 in the hereafter. Even so, it cannot escape the attention 0:00:31.500 --> 0:00:34.800 of intelligent people that the Bible has come down to 0:00:34.940 --> 0:00:38.400 us through the ages. For 1,400 years before the advent 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:41.920 of printing, the Bible was copied by monks and scribes, 0:00:41.979 --> 0:00:45.710 and this was done by hand. So the obvious questions 0:00:45.790 --> 0:00:48.170 arise when we read the first five books of the 0:00:48.210 --> 0:00:51.089 Old Testament, what the Jews call the Torah. Are we 0:00:51.110 --> 0:00:54.120 reading the same Torah the ancient Israelites read thousands of 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.380 years ago? When we read the Old Testament as a whole, 0:00:57.540 --> 0:01:00.740 is it the same Old Testament that Jesus knew? 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:03.980 And the same questions apply to the New Testament. 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:06.860 Is our New Testament today the same one that the 0:01:07.260 --> 0:01:11.709 early Christians studied and circulated among themselves in the centuries 0:01:11.830 --> 0:01:14.470 after Christ? The issue, in other words, is not the 0:01:14.510 --> 0:01:17.500 veracity of the Bible, whether it describes real people and 0:01:17.540 --> 0:01:21.080 true events. I'm considering that issue separately. By the way, 0:01:21.140 --> 0:01:23.820 my new book on that topic comes out very soon, 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:28.679 October 13th. It's called The Stones Cry Out Biblical Archaeology 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.160 Prophecy in the Last Days. You can pre-order it now. 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:33.610 It's a groundbreaking book I want you to have and 0:01:33.670 --> 0:01:36.770 to read. But that's not exactly our topic for today. 0:01:37.450 --> 0:01:40.170 Nor are we considering how the early Christians and the 0:01:40.270 --> 0:01:43.780 early church decided on which book should be included in 0:01:43.810 --> 0:01:46.100 the Bible. A few months ago, I did a monologue 0:01:46.140 --> 0:01:48.440 on that subject. You can check it out, or you 0:01:48.460 --> 0:01:52.360 can go to my Substack channel, which is just dineshjesuza.substack.com. 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:53.580 Read that monologue. 0:01:53.770 --> 0:01:56.150 By the way, I convert all my monologues into articles, 0:01:56.530 --> 0:01:59.770 and you can find them on my Substack. Here we 0:01:59.830 --> 0:02:04.950 are considering the reliability of the biblical text, how accurately 0:02:05.010 --> 0:02:07.990 it has been transmitted to us through time. This is 0:02:08.050 --> 0:02:10.370 a crucial issue because it goes to the heart of 0:02:10.430 --> 0:02:13.230 whether we can trust that the Bible we have is 0:02:13.290 --> 0:02:15.570 the real Bible, the inspired Word of God as it 0:02:15.630 --> 0:02:19.740 was originally written down. And this is where the debunkers 0:02:19.790 --> 0:02:24.920 come out in droves, academic debunkers, pop culture debunkers, online debunkers. 0:02:25.380 --> 0:02:28.240 Their common project is to discredit the Bible, and they 0:02:28.300 --> 0:02:31.120 do so by insinuating that the Bible we have today 0:02:31.730 --> 0:02:36.250 is a corrupted version replete with changes and errors passed 0:02:36.310 --> 0:02:39.430 down either deliberately or inadvertently. 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.380 By monks and scribes. through the ages. 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:44.700 Perhaps the most famous and influential debunker is the New 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:48.590 Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, author of a number of best-selling 0:02:48.630 --> 0:02:52.030 books on Christianity. I've crossed paths, or maybe I should 0:02:52.070 --> 0:02:55.780 say crossed swords, with Ehrman a few times. We've debated 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.060 two or three times on the issue of theodicy, the 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.310 issue of God, and suffering. Ehrman is a professor of 0:03:01.330 --> 0:03:04.670 religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Incidentally, 0:03:04.710 --> 0:03:07.910 his wife, whom I also know, teaches at nearby Duke University, 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:11.700 and she is a believing Christian. I recently watched some 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:16.290 of Ehrman's interviews. and he says that he once believed 0:03:16.330 --> 0:03:18.310 in the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Then, 0:03:18.510 --> 0:03:22.090 he recounts, he found out that biblical manuscripts were copied 0:03:22.130 --> 0:03:24.930 by hand through the centuries, and many of these copies 0:03:24.970 --> 0:03:27.990 had errors and changes, mostly minor, some of them just 0:03:28.110 --> 0:03:31.109 errors of punctuation or spelling or a word left out 0:03:31.150 --> 0:03:34.860 here or there, but occasionally the Changes were more significant 0:03:34.900 --> 0:03:35.280 than that. 0:03:35.300 --> 0:03:36.880 Ehrman concluded that. 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.980 If God really wanted his people to have an inspired, 0:03:40.060 --> 0:03:42.860 uncorrupted text, he would have made sure such errors did 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:47.300 not occur. He would have protected the incorruptibility of the 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:51.380 original text. Since he didn't, we can reasonably concludes, says Ehrman, 0:03:51.580 --> 0:03:54.820 the text is not inspired. It's a human creation, and 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:57.560 it's come down to us through the fallible human process 0:03:57.590 --> 0:04:00.790 of copying, perhaps even editing, which means that our text 0:04:00.850 --> 0:04:04.810 might not be strictly identical with the original one. Ehrman's conclusion, 0:04:05.250 --> 0:04:08.670 Our Bible is only an approximation of what was first written, 0:04:08.710 --> 0:04:13.110 and therefore it is somewhat unreliable. In other words, our 0:04:13.150 --> 0:04:16.770 Christianity itself rests on a shaky foundation. In my view, 0:04:17.150 --> 0:04:20.520 Ehrman's reasoning, which seems watertight to so many people, is 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.400 quite obviously fallacious. I'd like to illustrate the point by 0:04:24.460 --> 0:04:26.960 way of a thought experiment. Let's take one of my 0:04:27.100 --> 0:04:30.340 earlier books, say, What's So Great About America, or What's 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:30.780 So Great. 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:32.520 about Christianity. 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:37.170 Let's now give that book to 108th grade students and 0:04:37.270 --> 0:04:39.770 ask them to copy it out word for word. I'm 0:04:39.810 --> 0:04:42.290 making my own thought experiment difficult for my case by 0:04:42.370 --> 0:04:47.420 picking today's generation of undereducated, distracted, low attention span students. 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:50.140 Even so, let them do the copying by hand, which 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:52.660 they're not used to doing, and let's collect the hundred 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.140 versions they come up with. Now comes the fascinating part. 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:59.160 Let's throw out the original. Let's set it aside. So 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:02.440 we only have the hundred copies, no original, and yet 0:05:02.820 --> 0:05:07.770 I contend that from those hundred copies, however careless or defective, 0:05:08.050 --> 0:05:12.130 we can reconstruct the original word for word. We can 0:05:12.190 --> 0:05:16.460 entirely recover the original even from the faulty copies. How? 0:05:16.580 --> 0:05:16.900 Why? 0:05:17.339 --> 0:05:20.020 Well, for the reason that even when second-rate students make 0:05:20.060 --> 0:05:23.620 lots of copying mistakes, they don't make the same mistakes. 0:05:24.060 --> 0:05:26.479 So if you find an error or deviation, all you 0:05:26.500 --> 0:05:28.800 have to do is compare it to the other 99 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:31.800 manuscripts and you could easily discover what the error is 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:35.080 and fix it. Even if there are errors on every page, 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:39.700 they can be corrected using the same procedure. Problem solved. Yeah, 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:42.480 you say, but that depends on having a decent number 0:05:42.500 --> 0:05:45.510 of manuscripts to work with. In my thought experiment, we 0:05:45.550 --> 0:05:48.410 had a hundred copies. The experiment would not work if 0:05:48.450 --> 0:05:50.610 we had a much smaller number of copies, say two 0:05:50.650 --> 0:05:53.110 or three. I agree, of course, but let's ask how 0:05:53.210 --> 0:05:55.909 many manuscript fragments and versions do we. 0:05:55.870 --> 0:05:59.230 Have of the New Testament? Answer, 5,000. 0:05:59.230 --> 0:06:05.089 We have approximately 5,000 manuscripts found in different languages in 0:06:05.130 --> 0:06:09.500 many parts of the world. Rome, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Mesopotamia. 0:06:09.779 --> 0:06:11.779 Some of them partial copies of the whole, but many 0:06:11.820 --> 0:06:14.780 of them full copies of all the books. In other words, 0:06:15.140 --> 0:06:18.360 we possess far more copies than we did in my 0:06:18.660 --> 0:06:23.029 thought experiment. Recovering the original New Testament becomes relatively easy. 0:06:23.089 --> 0:06:25.490 Not only that, But the scribes who copied the New 0:06:25.510 --> 0:06:29.830 Testament weren't bored, distracted, social media numbed eighth graders. They 0:06:29.850 --> 0:06:33.890 were monks, religious scholars, and trained scribes. They were convinced 0:06:33.910 --> 0:06:37.250 they were transmitting a sacred text, a text produced with 0:06:37.330 --> 0:06:41.680 divine assistance, and so they labored diligently to avoid a 0:06:41.860 --> 0:06:44.860 single mistake. They did their work under the most exacting 0:06:44.940 --> 0:06:48.260 rules and with the most rigorous supervision. We can trust 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.860 the reliability of their transmission more than we can trust 0:06:52.220 --> 0:06:55.880 any similar human enterprise. I'm not talking about photocopying or 0:06:55.940 --> 0:07:00.589 computer reproduction attempted today. No group of Harvard graduates could 0:07:00.630 --> 0:07:03.500 copy any work, whether the Bible, Homer's Iliad, or Milton's 0:07:03.540 --> 0:07:06.080 Paradise Lost, and come even close to the level of 0:07:06.290 --> 0:07:10.530 accuracy the medieval and early Christian monks and scribes achieved. 0:07:10.940 --> 0:07:13.440 It's worth recalling in this context that the entire New 0:07:13.490 --> 0:07:16.970 Testament was written in the first century AD, which means 0:07:17.010 --> 0:07:20.210 it was written between two and six decades after the 0:07:20.250 --> 0:07:22.970 death of Christ and within the lifetime of many who 0:07:23.050 --> 0:07:26.990 lived through Christ's ministry and death. It's also noteworthy that 0:07:27.050 --> 0:07:30.070 with other ancient texts, including some of the most famous 0:07:30.130 --> 0:07:33.180 works of Greek and Roman philosophy and history and literature, 0:07:33.500 --> 0:07:36.880 the copies we have date to many centuries after they 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.760 were first written— and even more centuries away from the 0:07:39.820 --> 0:07:43.660 events they describe. Even so, scholars do not doubt the 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.720 accuracy or authenticity of those texts. The New Testament is 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:53.210 the most comprehensively authenticated ancient text in existence. No other 0:07:53.250 --> 0:07:57.490 book comes close. While Ehrman is a New Testament scholar 0:07:57.590 --> 0:08:00.810 and aims his critique mostly at the New Testament, his 0:08:00.870 --> 0:08:03.430 case would seem to be stronger. 0:08:03.010 --> 0:08:05.250 If he were to focus on the Old Testament. 0:08:05.310 --> 0:08:08.550 Here, there does appear to be a serious problem prior 0:08:08.590 --> 0:08:11.860 to the middle of the 20th century. The oldest copies 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.700 of the Hebrew Bible, the so-called Masoretic Text, dates back 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:19.300 to around 900 to 1000 AD. Wow, this is a 0:08:19.700 --> 0:08:23.530 very long way from the composition of these books. and 0:08:23.670 --> 0:08:26.710 even more distant from the events they describe? How can 0:08:26.750 --> 0:08:29.930 we be sure that the Masoretic text, the Hebrew Bible, 0:08:30.290 --> 0:08:33.070 is trustworthy, even if we trust a group of scholars 0:08:33.130 --> 0:08:36.200 and scribes called the Masoretes, even if we know the 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:40.520 punctilious procedures they underwent to ensure that they made no 0:08:40.660 --> 0:08:44.480 or very few mistakes? Now, this question was decisively answered 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:46.460 by the discovery in 1947 of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:52.350 found in the hills near the Dead Sea, are often 0:08:52.380 --> 0:08:55.910 called the greatest discovery in biblical archaeology to date. There 0:08:55.970 --> 0:09:00.530 are some 1,100 ancient documents consisting of several intact scrolls 0:09:00.610 --> 0:09:04.330 and thousands of fragments. These date from the 3rd century 0:09:04.390 --> 0:09:08.050 BC to the 1st century AD. They are more than 0:09:08.090 --> 0:09:11.630 a thousand years earlier than any existing text of the 0:09:11.690 --> 0:09:15.819 Hebrew Bible, an astounding, invaluable find. Among the Dead Sea 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:18.540 manuscripts are copies of all the books of the Old Testament, 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:21.450 the Hebrew Bible, missing only the book of Esther. The 0:09:21.490 --> 0:09:25.650 most famous scroll, the Great Isaiah Scroll, contains the entire 0:09:25.740 --> 0:09:28.280 text of the book of Isaiah. When this scroll was 0:09:28.740 --> 0:09:33.319 matched to the Masoretic text, scholars found they were virtually identical. 0:09:33.340 --> 0:09:36.780 The only discrepancies were minor errors of copying, which made 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.900 no difference to the meaning or significance of the text 0:09:40.100 --> 0:09:43.420 at all. The same is true when other books are compared. Essentially, 0:09:43.460 --> 0:09:47.040 the accuracy of the Masoretic text of the existing Hebrew 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:49.339 Bible was firmly. 0:09:48.900 --> 0:09:50.460 Established by the Dead Sea Scrolls. 0:09:50.780 --> 0:09:51.179 Scrolls. 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.490 A whole mode of skeptical questioning of the Bible from 0:09:54.530 --> 0:09:58.190 the early 19th century to the mid-20th century was discredited. 0:09:58.510 --> 0:10:01.699 The entire Old Testament was stunningly vindicated, at least in 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.599 terms of its authenticity, as a true and accurate replica 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:10.040 of the original. Does it follow then that prior to 1947, 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:12.900 there was no way to confirm the accuracy of the 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:13.500 Hebrew Bible? 0:10:13.620 --> 0:10:15.179 Actually, it does not. 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:18.079 In fact, there was a surefire way to do that, 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.670 to confirm its reliability, even though virtually none of the 0:10:21.890 --> 0:10:25.730 19th and 20th century scoffers availed themselves of it. Here 0:10:25.770 --> 0:10:28.250 is how the issue could have been resolved even prior 0:10:28.290 --> 0:10:31.470 to and without the Dead Sea Scrolls. During the 2nd 0:10:31.490 --> 0:10:34.829 and 3rd centuries BC, the Jewish scriptures, the Hebrew Bible, 0:10:35.110 --> 0:10:40.500 was translated from its original language, Hebrew and Aramaic, into Greek. 0:10:41.020 --> 0:10:43.819 This famous translation was done in Alexandria, Egypt. It is 0:10:43.860 --> 0:10:47.220 known as the Septuagint. The term Septuagint means 70. It 0:10:47.260 --> 0:10:50.920 supposedly refers to the number of scholars who produced the translation. 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:54.460 Most scholars believe it was the septuagint that Jesus and 0:10:54.500 --> 0:10:58.840 the apostles used and quoted from, not the original Hebrew Bible. 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.250 If this is so, it means that Jesus had some 0:11:01.300 --> 0:11:04.010 knowledge of at least three languages, Aramaic, which was his 0:11:04.050 --> 0:11:06.770 native tongue, and also Hebrew and Greek. 0:11:06.850 --> 0:11:07.970 Now, here's the point. 0:11:08.350 --> 0:11:10.990 We have in our hands the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretic 0:11:11.050 --> 0:11:14.809 text that dates back to 900 to 1000 AD. We're 0:11:14.830 --> 0:11:17.530 trying to figure out if this is the same Bible 0:11:17.730 --> 0:11:20.790 that the ancient Hebrews used, the Jews of the 2nd 0:11:20.830 --> 0:11:23.990 and 1st centuries BC, the Jews of Jesus' own day? Well, 0:11:24.390 --> 0:11:26.580 the easy way to resolve the issue is simply to 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:31.420 compare the Masoretic text to the Septuagint. Since the Greek 0:11:31.460 --> 0:11:34.679 translation dates back to the Hellenistic era, at least two 0:11:34.740 --> 0:11:37.840 centuries before the time of Christ, surely one can see 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.710 that if the Masoretes, who produced their work between the 0:11:41.090 --> 0:11:44.110 7th and 10th centuries AD, made meaningful changes in the 0:11:44.170 --> 0:11:48.290 intervening period... Hey, as it turns out, they did not. 0:11:48.510 --> 0:11:51.030 My conclusion is that whether we are talking about the 0:11:51.090 --> 0:11:54.090 Hebrew scriptures or the New Testament, when it comes to 0:11:54.130 --> 0:11:57.189 the Bible as a whole, Ehrman and his fellow debunkers 0:11:57.410 --> 0:12:02.209 are wrong. The debunkers have themselves been debunked by the evidence. 0:12:01.929 --> 0:12:03.330 Of history and archaeology. 0:12:03.630 --> 0:12:05.710 Whether or not you agree with the Bible, it's the 0:12:05.790 --> 0:12:09.740 same Bible the ancient Hebrews used, the same one Jesus 0:12:09.790 --> 0:12:13.800 himself taught from, the same Bible the early Christians studied 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:20.900 and circulated. And that's the way I see it. If 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:24.770 you're 64 or older, here's an inflation report you don't 0:12:24.809 --> 0:12:28.910 hear about, but should. This year, your Medicare premiums went 0:12:28.990 --> 0:12:33.329 up nearly 10%. Your cost of living raised under three. 0:12:33.429 --> 0:12:36.930 Think about that. You can't control premiums, but you can 0:12:37.010 --> 0:12:40.210 control your plan income. Millions of seniors are on the 0:12:40.309 --> 0:12:43.430 wrong one, overpaying without even knowing it. 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It's time to 0:15:22.750 --> 0:15:26.150 take toxins seriously and give your body the support it 0:15:26.210 --> 0:15:30.230 needs to renew your health, energy, and performance. I use 0:15:30.250 --> 0:15:32.340 this every day, and I encourage you to try it 0:15:32.380 --> 0:15:34.520 as well. It's the best way to protect. 0:15:34.180 --> 0:15:36.560 You and your family from daily pollution. 0:15:36.780 --> 0:15:45.740 Get yours today at at masterpiece.health.dinesh and get 10% off. Again, 0:15:46.000 --> 0:16:01.150 that's masterpiece.health.dinesh. The Stones Cry Out Biblical archaeology has the 0:16:01.290 --> 0:16:04.250 power to take people and events that have for centuries 0:16:04.310 --> 0:16:08.130 been regarded as matters of faith and now establish them 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:10.700 as matters of fact. For the first time, we do 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.700 not merely believe, we know. Throughout the world, many regard 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:17.820 the Bible as a mythical or fictional account of people 0:16:17.860 --> 0:16:21.160 who never existed and events that never happened. And many 0:16:21.180 --> 0:16:24.470 of the most astonishing discoveries have occurred recently with new 0:16:24.510 --> 0:16:28.670 discoveries continually being made. If the people and events in 0:16:28.690 --> 0:16:32.670 the Bible can be verified, and verified, moreover, from sources 0:16:32.830 --> 0:16:36.350 hostile to the biblical figures themselves, that. 0:16:36.250 --> 0:16:37.310 Counts for a lot. 0:16:37.430 --> 0:16:42.450 Are there any significant archaeological findings that contradict or refute 0:16:42.490 --> 0:16:45.630 the Bible? If the answer is no, then our confidence 0:16:45.700 --> 0:17:02.140 in the overall truth of the Bible is greatly strengthened. Guys, 0:17:02.180 --> 0:17:05.869 I'm delighted to welcome to the program Erin Molan. She 0:17:06.570 --> 0:17:10.910 is an international traveler, a podcaster, a commentator. She does 0:17:10.970 --> 0:17:14.030 the Erin Molan Show, which is in partnership with the 0:17:14.109 --> 0:17:16.170 Salem Podcast Network. 0:17:16.670 --> 0:17:19.320 I've been on her show. I'm delighted to have her 0:17:19.420 --> 0:17:21.560 on mine. Erin, welcome. Thanks for joining me. 0:17:23.710 --> 0:17:27.879 We're talking long distance, which is to say I'm in 0:17:27.970 --> 0:17:32.919 Texas and you are in Sydney and bound very soon 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:37.020 for the Middle East. Let me start by asking you 0:17:37.100 --> 0:17:43.800 to say a little bit about yourself and what is 0:17:43.900 --> 0:17:46.659 it that sort of drew you into this field of 0:17:46.740 --> 0:17:48.399 politics and commentary? 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:52.859 Thank you very, very much, first of all, Dinesh, for 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:56.010 having me. It's been a very awkward wait, given I 0:17:56.109 --> 0:17:58.290 asked you to come on my show over a year ago, 0:17:58.310 --> 0:18:00.909 but you are a much bigger deal than me. So 0:18:00.950 --> 0:18:03.490 I'm happy to patiently wait my time, which I have. 0:18:03.910 --> 0:18:06.490 So it's an honour. It's an honour to meet your 0:18:06.550 --> 0:18:08.270 audience as well. So thank you so much. 0:18:08.890 --> 0:18:09.390 You're right. 0:18:09.510 --> 0:18:13.200 I am based in Australia, but I travel frequently. Lots 0:18:13.260 --> 0:18:15.840 of very quick trips. You just saw Dinesh. I've got 0:18:15.900 --> 0:18:18.960 an eight-year-old, so I don't like to be away from her. 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:19.460 For too long. 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:21.520 So I will generally fly to the other side of 0:18:21.580 --> 0:18:24.609 the world for a night or two and then fly home. 0:18:24.650 --> 0:18:27.250 But lucky with technology, I can do a lot of 0:18:27.330 --> 0:18:30.550 it from Australia. And look, my story, I started out 0:18:30.609 --> 0:18:33.500 as a sports broadcaster. So they used to kind of 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:36.479 say I was like the Erin Andrews of Australia. So 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:39.290 I was the first woman to host things like Friday 0:18:39.350 --> 0:18:43.170 Night Football here in Australia. But I guess for me, 0:18:43.290 --> 0:18:47.469 talking about groin injuries at midnight on a Friday wore. 0:18:47.290 --> 0:18:51.880 Off a little bit. I always... had a real. 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:56.590 Interest in geopolitics and national security defence. And look, that 0:18:56.650 --> 0:18:59.070 comes from, like most of us in this field, my 0:18:59.130 --> 0:19:02.480 parents were very heavily engaged. My dad was actually a 0:19:02.619 --> 0:19:05.790 major general in the Australian Army. And I was very 0:19:05.869 --> 0:19:09.310 blessed to have, I mean, mum's more impressive than dad 0:19:09.530 --> 0:19:13.580 tenfold as wives normally tend to be, but really incredible 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:15.900 parents who taught me from a very young age, not 0:19:15.940 --> 0:19:19.480 just through what they told us, but by their actions 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:21.790 to stand up for what you believe in and to 0:19:21.940 --> 0:19:23.490 fight for what you value. 0:19:24.050 --> 0:19:25.290 And dad went to Iraq. 0:19:25.330 --> 0:19:27.290 He ran the war in Iraq for a year under 0:19:27.330 --> 0:19:30.090 General Petraeus. He was, in fact, the first Australian general 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:33.600 to run an American war in the modern era. He 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.550 was chief of operations, so during the Battle of Fallujah 0:19:36.590 --> 0:19:38.810 and the like, and to watch him go off for 0:19:38.830 --> 0:19:42.430 a year and do that was really formative. We lived 0:19:42.470 --> 0:19:45.270 in Indonesia as well, Dinesh, which we might talk about 0:19:45.290 --> 0:19:47.750 a little bit later, but that played a huge role 0:19:47.810 --> 0:19:51.740 in shaping, I guess, my worldview. and why I value 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.440 democracy and why I value freedom and all those things 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:57.240 that come with it so very much. 0:19:57.810 --> 0:19:58.690 I saw poverty. 0:19:58.869 --> 0:20:01.010 I saw people take to the streets in 1998 when 0:20:01.050 --> 0:20:06.080 the Sahara era fell and a president of 30 years 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:10.040 who was very corrupt was essentially taken down by people power. 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:13.540 And I watched the Trisakta University shootings. I watched people 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:17.130 die for what they believed in as a teenager. So 0:20:17.330 --> 0:20:19.830 a lot of things have come into where I am now, 0:20:19.910 --> 0:20:24.330 which is standing up and fighting for Western civilization. It's 0:20:24.369 --> 0:20:28.640 something I care deeply about for a million reasons, selfishly 0:20:28.740 --> 0:20:30.800 as well as for the rest of the world. As 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:33.240 I said, I've got an eight-year-old and the way that 0:20:33.300 --> 0:20:35.940 I grew up already in my country has changed so 0:20:36.020 --> 0:20:39.120 much from then till now. I want a world that 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.680 reflects the things that people like my dad were willing 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:45.290 to die for. Right now, I think we're losing it. 0:20:45.500 --> 0:20:47.480 I think we're the architects of our own demise and 0:20:47.530 --> 0:20:50.850 people like you and people like me and plenty of others, 0:20:50.869 --> 0:20:54.129 not enough, but plenty of others are standing up and 0:20:54.190 --> 0:20:55.290 saying enough is enough. 0:20:55.350 --> 0:20:56.630 We care deeply about all. 0:20:56.670 --> 0:20:58.719 We want to help everyone, but we've got to be 0:20:58.820 --> 0:21:01.800 realistic and we've got to protect what matters first. And 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:03.439 that is our countries and our people. 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:09.270 Erin, I've been to Australia now twice, but in pretty 0:21:09.369 --> 0:21:13.770 rapid succession. The first time was actually for this lecture 0:21:13.810 --> 0:21:16.570 tour I've mentioned to you before with Tucker Carlson, of 0:21:16.650 --> 0:21:20.860 all people, and we leapfrogged from one city to another, 0:21:20.940 --> 0:21:24.800 Brisbane to Adelaide to Perth and then back to Sydney 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:30.560 and Melbourne. And we can talk about Tucker maybe later, but... 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:36.300 I must say, Australia is a wonderful country, not only 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:38.980 the natural beauty of it, but I almost had the 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:43.030 feeling that it was America, but a few decades ago. 0:21:43.090 --> 0:21:47.090 In other words, it was sort of America circa 2006. 0:21:48.330 --> 0:21:51.850 And so, but I also had this foreboding, this sort 0:21:51.890 --> 0:21:55.369 of ominous sense that Australia is kind of moving more 0:21:55.550 --> 0:21:59.470 in the direction of the polarization and the bitterness of 0:21:59.550 --> 0:22:02.810 American politics. It's sort of not there yet, but it 0:22:02.850 --> 0:22:06.270 appears to be pushing that way. And it's almost like 0:22:06.350 --> 0:22:09.270 I wanted to yell out, you know, stop. You actually 0:22:09.330 --> 0:22:13.350 have it pretty good in Australia even now. Is that 0:22:13.410 --> 0:22:16.930 your impression? I mean, you're very familiar with US politics. 0:22:16.970 --> 0:22:19.629 How would you How would you compare the tone of 0:22:19.690 --> 0:22:22.080 politics in Australia and the United States? 0:22:23.260 --> 0:22:26.520 It's a really fascinating point you bring up and a 0:22:26.700 --> 0:22:31.840 fascinating observation that you make as well. Normally people say 0:22:31.900 --> 0:22:35.060 that about Australia in an offensive way, as in you 0:22:35.100 --> 0:22:37.880 guys are two decades behind, you have the internet yet, 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:40.100 et cetera, et cetera. But I feel like what you're 0:22:40.140 --> 0:22:44.640 saying is actually a compliment in some ways that we 0:22:44.740 --> 0:22:47.880 still are a country, I think, that is in some 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:51.929 ways very united and in some ways right on the 0:22:52.010 --> 0:22:58.110 brink of that falling apart, terrifyingly so. And I look 0:22:58.210 --> 0:23:00.840 at even off the back of October 7 and the 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:05.149 way that this country responded to and the impact that 0:23:05.190 --> 0:23:06.389 it's had domestically. 0:23:06.550 --> 0:23:08.990 And there's, I mean, there's a lot to dive into there. 0:23:09.070 --> 0:23:12.410