Trae (Trey) Stephens

And that's kind of opened the door to being able to have these conversations with people about why we believe what we believe and why we believe that that is not only good for our souls, but also good for humanity.

Yeah, no, people are super interested.

Even in the last just 18 to 24 months, the churches in San Francisco are seeing enormous growth, especially in Gen Z. I'm sure you've seen some of the stats that show that there's this resurgence of faith with Gen Z, particularly with men in Gen Z, which is really unusual, like looking at historical trends over the last hundred years.

So it's been really cool to see.

Well, I think there's been such a push.

really since like the 70s, but especially in just like the last five years around this kind of completely godless approach to life.

And some of those lies are being exposed.

I think we're starting to see societal dysfunction, a breakdown in trust in institutions.

You know, you have all of these different factors and young people are in an interesting position to look at that and say, man, none of the things that I thought I was promised

are real like all of these ridiculous kind of wokey ideas around how the world is supposed to function uh they don't actually work like society doesn't work like this you can't just walk around not believing in anything you have to believe in some sort of truth um and and i think that's kind of reawakened people to this idea that there's something in the classics um that are worth looking at

I don't know if you're a fan of the HBO show Silicon Valley, but there was this narrative that was picked up for the first 20 years of the 21st century around weird Eastern mysticism and Buddhism and stuff like that.

And the CEO of Hooli, the big company in the HBO show, had a mystic, a monk that was his mentor and advisor.

And that was really the moment.

That was Burning Man, Silicon Valley style.

And

It was kind of a joke.

It became a meme where people are like, wow, this is really silly.

Like all these things that were being told are just really silly, you know, untruths.

And you're starting to see people kind of turn from that kind of Eastern mysticism thing and look back at the Western classics, which, you know, Judeo-Christian ideas seem a lot more moored in some way.

Yeah, it's been great.