God's Secretaries

Dennis Prager here. Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast. To hear the entire 3 hours of my radio show commercial-free every single day, become a member of Prager Utopia. You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives as well as the daily show prep. Subscribe at pragertopia.com.

Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to The Dennis Prager Show, and I have been looking forward to this interview for some time now. A book has just been published titled God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. Nothing has shaped Western thought as much as the Bible.

Nothing.

I mean, even an atheist has to acknowledge that, so let's get that straight. And no translation has shaped the Western world like the King James translation. Now, I gotta tell you, and I have to tell the author of the book, Adam Nicholson, first of all, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

You're in Sussex, England right now, correct?

I am.

So you put your day in already, so you're nice and relaxed. I trust you're smoking a pipe and there is a bulldog at your side.

Feet up by the fire.

Yes, exactly. That's it. That's it, good.

The image is perfect.

With a picture of Winston Churchill right behind you. All right, now I know exactly where you are.

For all I know, he's in a pub with, you know, 3 women next to him. Who knows?

Anyway, thank you for joining me. Your book is, as I said earlier, God's Secretaries, just published by, in fact, our mutual publisher HarperCollins. Now, by the way, let me just tell you, may I call you Adam?

You of course can.

No, no, no, if you prefer Mr. Nicholson, I'm happy with that.

No, I prefer Adam.

Okay, very good. Adam, you— I'm sure you've been interviewed by many, and I hope you have because this book deserves wide, wide distribution. Uh, but, uh, I bet that I'm one of the few, uh, radio talk show hosts or television, uh, commentators that have interviewed you who actually knows Biblical Hebrew. So, uh, I come to this—

you're the only one. Okay, probably the only one in the world. Do I call you Mr. Prager?

Uh, now I've earned Mr. as a result.

I think so. I think it's Mr. from now on. That would be way, way, way ahead of me on that.

That would be the first time though where the interviewer calls the guest by his first name and the interviewer gets called by his surname. No, you please—

can you teach me, Mr. Prager?

You're a good man. All right, anyway, no, no, please, please call me Dennis.

In any event, uh, uh, so I come to this with tremendous interest, uh, obviously. And I have— I am always on the search. I have about 10 different translations of the Bible in English, and, and I, I gotta tell you, there are some that are somewhat more accurate at times, and I'm going to talk to you about that, but nothing approaches the King James Version for the sense of majesty that the original does have. And so I am terribly interested in this, how it came about. So let's—

let's—

first of all, I always like to ask authors, why did you write this?

Well, I came to it, uh, from a very odd route. A couple of years ago— well, in fact, in 1999— I was writing a book for the British government about a disastrous project they had called the Millennium Dome. I don't know if word of the Millennium Dome reached you over there.

Well, it didn't reach me personally. I can't speak for all my listeners.

A huge, vastly expensive, costing £1 billion, uh, you know, $1.5 billion, right, project to make this kind of grand celebration of, uh, the British national spirit. All the threads of British life were meant to be unified in this great circus tent in Greenwich in East London. and I was employed by the government to, well, not to beat about the bush, to propagandize for it, to write an account of it as the most marvelous thing that ever happened. It was in the end a complete disaster, full of terrible, bitter arguments and kind of a popular failure, terribly criticized in the press, and generally a disaster. And when I was doing it, a friend of mine said —of course, the thing you should be writing about is the King James Bible, because the King James Bible in the early 17th century was also a great central government project, aiming to unify all the different threads in the nation at the time, bringing together vast numbers of very diverse people. And out of that, out of those same circumstances which have made this modern disaster, the most beautiful book ever written in the English language emerged, and how did that happen? I think that that is the question at the heart of my book.

Well, that's a fascinating beginning. Like so many things that happen in our lives, it happened from out of nowhere, as it were. Yeah. It's the last thing you expected, obviously, then. You know, it is remarkable when going through your book that I never ever expected a committee to ever produce anything good.

No, that is the great curiosity. They— the, the king and his archbishop gathered together these 50-odd, uh, divines, academics, bishops, people who wanted to be and would be bishops, court politicians, scholars, uh, experts in Hebrew. Many misters among them. And, uh, from that very, very and deliberately diverse group, this great Jacobean music emerged. And I think the reason that, or one of the reasons that from a committee, uh, something great could emerge in the 17th century is that there was a sense of authority alive in Jacobean England, which we don't quite have. They believed in authority to a degree that I think we would now find extraordinary and very deeply illiberal. You know, Jacobean England is a place where people can get executed for not agreeing with central government ideology. I mean, in a way, it is an authoritarian state, like a 20th century authoritarian system. And I think that if it had been a modern committee, uh, there would have been far, far more disagreement than there was then, simply because you had to obey. There is one central state ideology, and you have to obey it if you're to get on in the world, and at the edges, if you're even to survive. And therefore what?

There— because there was authority Therefore, the committee what, would listen to one voice? Yes, I mean— Whose voice was that? King James I?

Yes, I think the 17th century idea of authority is that unless you have a very, very well-established and unchallengeable authority and order, you risk anarchy. There is no idea that individuals should have freedom of conscience, or freedom really to think or do what they want. The governing idea of the time is this very, very conservative one, that you have to subscribe to a steeply hierarchical structure which begins at the bottom, obviously, with peasants and laborers, and rises up through the ranks of society. Through the court and these people who are actually involved in this translation onto the king and onto God. And this is one continuous, integrated, organic whole. And if you, if you start to eat away at that, as of course Puritanism does— you know, Puritanism essentially says there is no need for this hierarchy, uh, any individual can just have direct access to God. You don't need bishops, archbishops. Maybe you don't even need kings. And those people, those kind of what we would think of now as sort of free-thinking Puritans, were seen as the most terrifyingly dangerous people in English society. By the way, of course, England booted them out, right?

And we got them. And you got— and we got— and that's right, and we got the United States as a result. Now, now, it's interesting though, because In modern liberal— and I don't use that word politically, I'm using it in your term, liberal, illiberal— in modern liberal parlance, Puritan is almost synonymous with arch-conservative and hierarchical and authoritarian.

That is interesting, an interesting shift, isn't it? Because at the heart of Puritanism, and in fact I think you could say even at the heart of Christianity, there is this very subversive message, uh, which dispenses with worldly authority and, and makes worldly authority insignificant in, in, in the eyes of God, even in the eyes— certainly, you know, in the light of a direct connection between the individual conscience and God. So American authority is an irrelevance.

American, American individualism and liberty, then it owes a great deal to the Puritans. It certainly does.

I mean, I think that we, all of us, completely misinterpret Puritanism. I mean, there is an idea that Puritanism, for example, in the 17th century, is against sex and against fleshly pleasures. But, but these people are very, very involved with the idea that sex within marriage is a beautiful and creative thing. They write and translate, for example, the Song of Songs, which is a highly erotic poem translated by some of the most Puritan translators involved on this, uh, in the lushest and most exotic way you could think of.

We'll be back in a moment.

Adam Nicholson, and you can imagine if he's this well spoken how well his book reads, God's Secretaries. We'll be back in a moment. I'm Dennis Prager. Hi everybody, my guest in England is Adam Nicholson, who has just published through HarperCollins here in the United States The Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. And even if, uh, you are not religiously inclined, it is a fascinating read because I can't think of a book that has come close to influencing our society as much as the Bible and as much as the King James Version. Now, this is done by order of King James I in the early 1600s, right? Yeah. Now, why did he— what was wrong with pre-existing English translations?

Well, England had got in a terrible muddle. He didn't really know whether it was a Protestant Reformed country, or a sort of hangover from a Catholic past. And England, they yo-yoed all through the 16th century one way and another, sort of, and has ended up with a very Protestant theology and a very Catholic form of church organization and way of going about things in church. And it ended up with two Bibles, one the sort of popular Bible, which was very Calvinist and, uh, very well done. I mean, a beautiful translation, but very anti-king.

Well, how do you, how do you have either a translation as a translation or it's not?

How do you have— for example, the, um, this, this Bible called the Geneva Bible, it had been done by, to me Englishman exiled in Geneva, uh, always translates the word king in the Old Testament, which appears more than 400 times, as tyrant.

No kidding? That's like— that is the first political correctness.

This was the great Bible of 16th century England. It was Shakespeare's Bible, which is— you know, we were talking about subversion before. It's one of the most subversive books ever written. Basically saying that kings don't mean anything in the light of God. And so the government, the Elizabethan government, had produced another Bible to rival it called the Bishop's Bible, which was very kind of proper in supporting the church establishment, had a huge portrait of Elizabeth on its title page, no picture of God. And, uh, but it was a dreadful translation. It— the phrase that appears in the King James Bible as 'cast thy bread upon the waters,' for example, is translated in the Bishop's Bible as 'lay thy 'Upon wet faces,' and that doesn't quite have the same ring to it. So, so something had to be done. James, you know, he couldn't tolerate the anti-king Bible, and no one in the country could tolerate the hopeless government Bible. So this was a project to make a Bible, which is an unbelievably central thing to do. You know, it's, it's like the kind of code for everything you might do or think or any way you might live. So the Bible is central to government, and he has— he commissions a Bible which everyone can subscribe to but doesn't undermine his own standing as king.

Oh, so that is— so that's how it came about. This was a way to, as, as you pointed out originally, to unify the contrasting, as it will, as it were, Catholicized English with the newly Protestantized English.

That is the idea, that in some ways it bridges these very, very categories.

And it bridges it through the means of majesty and accuracy, is that it?

Yeah, I mean, I think that this is— it's a very, it's a very conscious program to make a Bible that will suit everyone. And it's a question of rhetoric, really, of style, of the way it goes about it. And And the Bible, over and over again, makes a translation which is very clear and accessible, using very ordinary language. I think there are only something like 10,000 words used in the King James Bible, as against some 25,000 in Shakespeare, for example. So it's very ordinary language.

Though to us it's extremely flowery language, to us today.

Well, they've been set in this very— majestic and very sonorous tone. Was it so—

was it sonorous to the Englishmen of that day?

Yeah, it is not— not only to us. It's not the English that was spoken on the street at the time. It's the— in the sort of English which these translators imagined God might speak, right? It is sort of godly English.

Which brings me to this question: were all the members of these committees that made the translation, were they all believers?

Undoubtedly. I mean, there were, there were atheists in, uh, in, uh, early modern England, but there were very, very few. And every single one of, of these translators would have had no— would almost have not understood the question. You know, it's like saying to, to us, do you believe in physics? Right. It's how the world works.

Yes, yes. And, and, and I have to say, it's reflected in the translation. They, they— you feel that they— there's trepidation before the Holy of Holies when you read the King James Version.

You do. I mean, I think that, uh, it's difficult in some ways for us, particularly I think in England, perhaps more in England than in America, to realize how central this is to the way in which that world works. It is much more like, I think, I mean the place of the Bible is much more like the place of the Koran in an Islamic country now than the place of the Bible in a modern secular democracy. It is the sort of DNA of the culture. And so these people are addressing the central document, and the immense care they took to be loyal to the original texts is really— it's an awe-inspiring sight. I mean, the precision with which they need to transmit those original meanings is an extraordinary and humbling thing.

One of the members of the committee, if I remember correctly, actually spoke about a dozen languages. Is that right?

Yeah, the greatest of all the translators, a man called Lancelot Andrews, is said to have spoken 15 modern languages and 6 ancient.

I mean, it boggles the mind.

It boggles the mind, but I mean, Andrews is a very good example of how different they are from us. This great scholar who is Bishop of Ely and Winchester and Chichester, one great big sort of administrative job after another, a court politician, a member of the King's Council, like the King's Cabinet, you know, central politician, one of the great prose writers of his day, as well as being this great scholar, making himself a fortune on the side, siphoning off money from the bishoprics that he held. Throwing parties for the king which cost £3,000 at a time when, when a vicar would be paid £20 a year in salary. He is a sort of multiple, multiple figure, larger than life, as we say. He simply doesn't exist today, apart from you, of course, Mr. Prager.

You're quite charming. Adam Nicholson. Adam Nicholson.

I have to meet you one day.

Adam Nicholson, God's Secretaries is the book, The Making of the King James Bible, and, uh, I, I can't recommend it too highly to you. We'll be back in a moment. I want to ask about the word thou. We shall return. This is The Dennis Prager Show. I'm Dennis Prager, and I welcome you back. I am talking to Adam Nicholson. He's in England, I'm in California, USA. His book is God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. And in case you're curious, to say that you don't have to be religious to enjoy this book, I guess I could best put it in this way. There was a large article on the book in The New Yorker, which is as resolutely modern and secular as any magazine can be, and this is how they described the book. It is a popular book as popular books used to be, a breeze rather than a scholarly sweat, but humanely erudite, elegantly written, passionately felt, and jauntily unfootnoted, alas. I'm sure you've seen that, and it was in fact a review— it was reviewed quite widely. By the way, I'm going to put my own credibility on the line with you. I, I You check on Amazon.com in America, our version of it, and I bet you, you will see it rise fairly significantly after my listeners hear you. I have a book reading and book buying audience that I'm very proud of, and your book should be on their list. So you watch that number. You'll get some satisfaction, I believe. Of course, if it goes down, don't tell me. In any event, The, uh, I want to ask you, because I've always wondered about this, because by the way, let me just tell you, when I teach the Bible, which I have been doing for 20 years from the Hebrew, and when I— when I— but I do it in English, and, and I use a number of translations. I love the King James by far the most in terms of sheer absolute accuracy. They've done a little better in modern— for example, it really doesn't say thou shalt not steal. It says, do not steal. But thou shalt not steal is far more powerful. Thou shalt and thou shalt not, then do not. But in terms of sheer accuracy, the Hebrew is lo tignov, do not, no steal, period. And so that's why it's good to use, use both. So it always interested me why they did say thou shalt not steal.

Well, thou shalt not steal is, uh, about you, isn't it? It's about you, the reader or the listener, which is true.

And the Hebrew is the singular. And do not— that's a good—

that's a good point, because it's a statement from, you know, the divine throne in a way. But thou shalt not steal has got a kind of personal—

oh, I agree, I much prefer it. I'm saying, but— and you know what, now that you mention it, The implication in the Hebrew is you, because of the verb. We don't have that in English. Do not steal could be you plural or you singular, right? But in— you're right, because it is in the Hebrew the singular of the second person of you. So that's— I— you, you've just actually made a great defense of the thou shalt not. Let me ask you about thou. What was that when— if I met you on a street in England in 1603 Would I have said, 'How art thou feeling?' You might have, and you might not have.

It was just on the cusp. That was one of the things that was changing. English was in an incredibly fluid state, and thou did have an element of antiqueness about it. Even then? But even then. But it wasn't uncurrent. It was just on the change. And I think you can see that throughout the King James Bible, that where they have the choice, they on the whole choose the older form, the sort of form which interestingly their fathers and grandfathers might have used.

Was thou— what was thou? Was there— did thou exist along with you?

Yes, I mean, thou is is the oldest form, and for the second person singular of what we now say is you, and it just dropped away in the course of the 17th century, that by the 18th century it would have been thought very curious to use thou. But it's, I mean, I think thou is a great word because it is in fact a word of intimacy, isn't it? It's not you plural, you the crowd, There is a kind of closeness between—

Oh, that's right. In other words, you can be singular or plural, but thou is only singular.

And there is a certain distance in you. You all, it's almost like.

That's right, that's right. Oh, this is just exhilarating for me. We'll be back in a moment. Adam Nicholson, N-I-C-O, not C-H, N-I-C-O-L-S-O-N, HarperCollins, the publisher of the book God's Secretaries. We return. In a moment, and we're going to learn a little about King James, who, by the way, isn't it ironic that that's, that's basically all he's remembered for? And what a remembrance it is. We'll be back in a moment. I'm Dennis Prager. I'm Dennis Prager, and I welcome you back. My guest in Sussex, England is Adam Nicholson. He is the author of the just-published God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. And as The New Yorker, hardly a religious tome or religious journal, notes, uh, it is elegant, erudite, passionate, popular, and jauntily unfootnoted. But that part I put in undertones. I don't know what footnotes— I don't even know what footnotes, frankly, you can use much. It was, uh, I, I, I'm— it's— I actually do like when there are footnotes in history books, but I'm not sure that this one really needed it.

Well, it was a difficult decision to make about footnotes. I mean, footnotes do sort of lend an air of trust to the thing. Yes, that's right. You see them, you know that you can go back to some sources. But they do have a way of making it look like a sort of reference book, I think, rather than a story. And I wanted to tell a story, right, which you do well.

Now let's go to King James himself. So we— you really helped me on the thou. I can't tell you, really, this was because I have struggled with that so long. Which do I use, the majestic or the accurate? But there is accuracy in "Thou shalt not steal" because it is directed to the "you" singular, and I very much appreciate that. By the way, there is an issue that I have raised with my listeners for much of my 20 years on radio, and that is that "Thou shalt not kill" is actually, in modern English at any rate, inaccurate. It's "Thou shalt not murder," and that is an important distinction. Because thou shalt not kill would mean that the Ten Commandments came out against warfare, came out for pacifism, even vegetarianism theoretically, because you can't kill an animal. Did kill— and you may not have the answer to this— did kill in those days imply murder? I don't know.

I mean, certainly they had no compunction about killing, you know. They, they, they— I think I think something like 70 death sentences a year were carried out in early 17th century England, and they killed happily enough. I don't know. I think that kill and murder— there is certainly the word murder is used at the time, and I think they are distinct.

So if it was used at the time, then it was an unfortunate choice for a great translation. I mean, no translation could be perfect, but it really was You're right, I don't have the answer to that.

I don't know why it doesn't say thou shalt not murder.

Because the Hebrew makes this very clear distinction, uh, that they're both, both words there. Anyway, it's just one of those things that has always stuck with me because I know it has misled a lot of well-intentioned religious people into pacifism, opposition to capital punishment, and so on, which may be fine for other reasons but not for the reason that the Ten Commandments bans it. James I, tell us a little about him. Was this an intellectual king?

He was an incredibly intellectual king, the most intellectual person ever to have sat on the English throne. He's the only one ever to have had his works collected in a handsome volume. He was a very, very strange man. He'd been brought up in Scotland. His mother was Mary, Queen of Scots, and she deserted him, ran away to England when he was 1 year old. And he'd had a childhood and an adolescence being kidnapped by one faction after another of Scottish nobles, rather violent Scottish nobles, uh, being berated and kicked from one end of Scotland to another by some fearsome ministers of the Scottish church. And he became a very odd man, that he was very intellectual. In some ways, intellectuality was a sort of retreat for him from the real world, from the pain of hunting. He loved young boys. Strings of beautiful young boys feature in his life. And, uh, and yet, I mean, he's always had a pretty bad press in history as this self-indulgent, gay, uh, incompetent king. But there is a great, great deal to him. He, he had a vision of a kind of integrated society of one whole loving kingdom, in effect, peace, at peace with itself, which is a great and dignified dream and was then. And this Bible, part of the purpose of this Bible, was to bring about that dream of unity and wholeness. And people forget that the rest of Europe at the time was riven by these terrible religious wars in France and Germany and all through Central Europe, some of the bloodiest wars ever fought. And James's policy of, you know, non-confrontation between divergent parts of the society actually prevented war happening in England. Until the 1630s. Well, by when he was dead and his far less competent son Charles was on the throne. So in a way, I can think— you can think of James as rather a hero for that, a kind of a king who believed in love.

Well, obviously he did, since you mentioned the string of boys.

Well, he did. He was— I mean, he was incredibly self-indulgent. He used to There's a great story of he was sitting in court one day when a member of the exchequer walked past with a tray laden with gold coins, £3,000 or £4,000 worth of gold coins, and a beautiful boy was staring at this pile of money open-mouthed. And the king said, why are you staring at that? And he said, because I've never seen anything like it in my life. And the king said, well, have it then. Why don't you have it? Take it to his rooms. I think that's just heroic. That's what kings are for.

Well, you know, by the way, this is a very fascinating irony of history because the argument is made frequently, and I have debated this with myself and with my listeners for many years, how important is the private life of public figures? And I have argued that the private life of public figures is less important than most people that I tend to agree with on other matters. And here is a classic example because the most religious Americans and others who are English speakers, quote and revere properly the Bible that they call the King James Version with a— for— with regard to a man whose private life was quite in violation of many of the precepts that they most, uh, dearly hold.

Yes, I mean, I think the two things are connected in James, that his, uh, you know, his desire for a happy world in some way comes from his delight in life and having great pleasurable times. Fascinating. The two don't diverge. Wow.

Wow. All right, we'll be back in a moment for the final, uh, final installment here of my talk with Adam Nicholson. The book God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible.

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All right, y'all, join me.

It's the happy— uh-oh, I went too fast. Oh, I went too fast. Yes, everybody, it's a dark time we're living in, but you still have to be happy. I know it sounds contradictory, but what is your choice? To be unhappy? First of all, you give the bad guys a victory. They would be more than happy to know they made you unhappy. Secondly, what good does it do? It's a— it— I mean, if you can only be happy in good times, doesn't say much for the power of happiness. So I am adamant about it, and I've never missed a Friday that I've been on. I mean, some Fridays I'm off, obviously, but I would say 48 out of 52 Fridays a year since 1999 I've done the Happiness Hour. Because the happy make the world better and the unhappy tend to make it worse. That's the way it works. I have a great topic for you today, and I rarely have a title, so Sean, if you keep— who keeps the sums? You do, right? All right, so here it is: Sober Fund. That's today's topic. Sober fun. My son is very open about it, my second son, who, uh, was born to a very heavily drug-addicted birth mother. His late mom and I adopted him the day he was born, as I have No, I attach little to no significance to blood. It has never meant anything to me. He's my son, period, from the day he was born. And I have one biological son whom I adore as well, obviously. Anyway, the, uh, he was— he battled alcohol and drugs for a good chunk of his youth. And he's been sober now, I think, I think 5 years, is it? And he said to me something when he first began his sobriety, that he couldn't imagine having fun while sober. And that was a revelation to me. And it opened my eyes to the fact that the idea that you could have fun in life and be sober is in fact not a popular idea among many people. You don't have to be an addict to worry that you can't have fun if you're sober. This issue arose in my latest Dennis and Julie podcast. It'll come out on Monday. Parts air on the Salem News Channel this weekend. To see all of them in their entirety, go to the Dennis Prager Show on YouTube. Again, we have to have a link at DennisPrager.com. It's a little silly that we don't. I'm telling you though, these, uh, this hour to an hour and a half that I do each week with Julie Hartman is very powerful stuff. And it's— it brings out things in me that, even though I'm very open on the show, I— are parts of me that I just I would never have mentioned, not because I want to hide it, but because it's not brought out of me as she does. And likewise her. It's, it's, it's remarkable. It's called Dennis and Julie. And this, this notion of can you be sober and have fun is a very, very big one. It's, it's not only the addict who thinks it's impossible. A lot of people think it's impossible. I remember in college when kids would say, my peers would say, oh man, when you, you know, there's nothing like sex when after, you know, on marijuana, or when you're, when you're high on something. Whether it's alcohol or a drug. And I remember thinking, wait a minute, you, you need something to enhance the fun of sex? You, you gotta— I, I couldn't believe it. Like, it, it isn't fun enough? You needed, you needed an enhancer? At 22 years of age, I, I didn't realize what I was confronting. The belief that you can't have fun if you're sober. That's really part of what that approach was, a manifestation of that thinking. I have to be high on something Could be gambling, by the way. It's not necessarily a drug or alcohol, but high— those things are what really make life exciting and fun. It— a lot came together in talking to Julie. About this notion of sober fun. It actually arose in a very small way. She was at my house with my wife and me, and she came over to my desk to see what I was looking at on the, on the internet. It was, for whatever reason, it was apparent I wasn't working. As I say to you, I take a vacation every day. So she comes over to the computer. You'll get a charge out of this. What do you think I was looking at? Stereo something. Very— not absolutely a coherent response. Something audio equipment. I was looking— I'm almost embarrassed to say I was looking at different inks. I told you folks, I'm really into fountain pens and the variety of colors that were available with a certain brand and many brands. She— so she came over and she looks and sees on the screen all these colors of fountain pen inks. And to my great joy and amazement, she found it fascinating, just fascinating. And I, I, we spent quite a while on these various greens, and she's fallen in love with writing with a fountain pen anyway. And now that she sees, oh my God, all of these varieties— it's almost an infinite variety of colors, which is half the fun of fountain pen writing, is choosing the color ink you have. It's not something you can do with a ballpoint pen. You got a big choice in most ballpoint pens between blue and black, but here it was infinite. She saw a pink that she fell in love with. Not— it was not my personal favorite for sexist reasons, but anyway, it wasn't. But it was beautiful in its way. Absolutely. Pink's a beautiful color. And that's what hit her. She said, you, Dennis, you have a lot of sober fun. And I always did. That's why I have recommended on the Happiness Hour hobbies Hobbies are the perfect example of sober fun, and there's been an absolute decline in, in hobbies. What, what, what does this— what is the youngest generation today do for hobbies? I hear very often video games. I, I'm not sure that that qualifies. It might. That, that, that's amusement. I don't think that's a hobby. I think it's amusement. Anyway, how do you react? Do you, do you hear what I'm saying on the need for sober fun? It's a better life. Has that been a battle in your life? 1-800-PRAGER-776, 877-243-7776. The Happiness Hour on The Dennis Prager Show. Hi everybody, Happiness Hour on the Dennis Prager Show. Sober fun is the topic. So, uh, Rick, may I mention you, uh, in, in the context here? So Rick, who works on the show next to Sean Periodically punches Sean to make sure that Sean stays on the straight and narrow. Sober fun for both of you, which is a beautiful thing. Anyway, Rick was like, like my, uh, one of my sons, was addicted for many years as a kid, and he came in to say to me that's exactly what he feared. Could not imagine getting sober and still having fun. But these are not the only— it's not only addicts. The— I told you about how many kids my age in my 20s would say, oh yeah, you know, if you have sex, you should really, uh, get high first, and then it's really intense. Like sex in your 20s needs an enhancement. It's not enough. And the pursuit of the, the adrenaline rush, or whatever the chemical description would be, is a very big one today. I guess one way of putting my message here on this Happiness Hour edition would be that one should try to get high on life, which I think is very possible. I mean, there is so much available that maybe I'm built differently, but I, I don't I don't think it's that different. The rush that I feel with music, for example— now, mine is classical music, but yours may well be another type of music— that doesn't provide some sort of quote-unquote high music? A sober high is, is being with friends. I have a sober high every week in my Sabbath. Told you, it's my secret weapon for my energy, my outlook, my joy. Away a week, a day a week away from everything, just with, just with people and/or family. In other words, friends and/or family. If you don't have it, you can't imagine it. It's not something you can imagine. You'd have to— you have to experience it. While 99% of the rest of the country was locked down, willingly or forcibly, I was gathered with my same dozen friends every single Friday night as if nothing were happening. That was a very big deal in my life and in the other 11 people's lives. Hobbies afford a sober high or sober fun. That's a big trick in life. In terms of, uh, of happiness. Uh, okay, let's go to Marty in Plymouth, Michigan. Hello, Marty.

Hello, Dennis. This is a real honor to speak with you. Thank you. You're on a good topic today. Yep, I know. I, for the grace of God, have been sober for 43 years. How old are you now?

How old are you now?

I'm 67, so I drank all through college.

Right, exactly. So 24, you became sober? Okay, correct.

Yep. And what I've discovered, it's the most important thing, is you have to find internal peace first. And then I drank for that enhancement. You know, there's a line in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when I think Elizabeth Taylor says to Paul Newman, why do you drink so much? And he says, well, I'm trying to get that click. Well, you only get that click the first time you get high, or like you said, the first time you have sex, the first time you do drugs, and then you're trying to chase it ever thereafter. And so you have to find peace in your heart, and then you can find joy being— doing things by yourself. Or I love to bike ride and swim and ski But I will do those things alone. I don't need anybody to do those with me to have joy.

Well, obviously you have found sober fun.

I have, yeah.

Oh, and I had— I told you when, when you were 23 that you can have sober fun, would you thought I was out of my mind? Probably, right? Okay. That's my plan, ladies and gentlemen. I thank you, sir. I do thank you. I gotta move on here. And all right, let's see. David in Deerfield, Wisconsin.

Hello, Dennis Prager to speak with you. Thank you. You've helped me save my children's lives. You're a good man.

How did I help you save your children's lives?

Well, I mean, you just speak common sense, and I'm able to, I'm able to impart that to them.

Oh, good, good. You made my day. Thank you.

Yes, yes. One of them's a little off the deep end, but 3 of them at least are. Well, you know, 3 for 4 is batting.750.

Yeah, that's, that's Hall of Fame.

So I have, I have, I have 4 major hobbies, um, I'm a semi-professional guitar player. I like studying the Bible. I play golf and I brew beer. And I'm probably— two of them I'm typically sober for. I'm sober. And the other two I probably drink when I'm doing that.

So, well, it doesn't mean you're not sober. Are you— do you drink together? Are you getting drunk?

I drink just because I enjoy it, right? So, okay, yeah, not falling, not falling. No, I don't like to drink and get— okay, all right.

So they're all sober fun. Yeah, yeah.

But the— when I study the Bible, of course I don't drink. And typically when I'm brewing beer, I don't drink. Uh, if it seems like if I, um, by the end, by the time that I'm done brewing the beer though, I am definitely having one. So I find that it comes out better, uh, if I hold off. That, that's fascinating.

Well, thank you very much. Maybe one way of describing this hour's subject is the more sober fun you can have in life, the happier your life will be. And if you can't find sober fun That's a very serious problem. There are so many avenues. I mean, I didn't mention another one— travel. That's a high, at least for me, and for a lot of people. Maybe not for you. Back in a moment.

—barking like a dog, howling at the moon. You'd be mad as a newlywed hen, up all night wondering where I'd been. I'd fall down and say, come help me, honey. You laughed out loud, I guess you thought it was funny. But I sobered up, I got to thinking, girl, you ain't much fun since I quit drinking.

Now ain't no—

All right, everybody, happiness hour, second hour of Friday. I'm Dennis Prager. The subject is sober fun. Increasingly— well, I don't know if it's increasingly, I think it is, I'm not certain— people are not having fun from life but from additives. Drugs and alcohol are the most obvious, or gambling or any, any addictive behavior like that. But it's a reliance on adrenaline producers outside of normal life. I mean, friends, sometimes family if you have good family relations, If you have a good marriage, your marriage, you travel, music, hobbies. I mean, there are so many sources of what I call sober fun. It's quite remarkable that people do not find in life itself those fun things, those exciting things even. Okay, I, I learned that from people who feared getting sober because they couldn't believe they'd have fun. And I'm gonna have fun without drinking? It's almost impossible for the regular drinker to think that. Okay, let's see here. Thinks if someone smokes, it turns into the guilt switch. Okay, all right, I'll try that. Springfield, Pennsylvania.

Mike, hello. Hello, Dennis. Hi. You signed my Deuteronomy book at the Fuse with a light green. Did it have a special name?

That's funny. I must admit, I don't remember the name of all the inks that I use, but it is a very fair question. Yeah, I was gonna—

my comment was maybe some people— I'm not talking from experience, I was a late bloomer— maybe some people smoke and it masks or turns off the guilt switch before they have sex.

Well, I think that's an interesting question. Uh, when my peers would tell me how much better sex was went high, I don't think it was to reduce guilt. I don't think they had any guilt. However, there are women who will in fact take something, have a drink, or, or smoke a joint perhaps, if they're not committed to the guy that they're about to have sex with. In other words, like girls in the hookup culture at college. So it would— it might be more applicable in those, in those cases. All right, I thank you for that. And Ruth Ann in Erie, Pennsylvania. Hello.

Hello, thank you for taking my call. The reason that I called is I was raised by Christian parents that really lived it and had a church that believed that we have a hole-shaped vacuum in our heart that only God can fill. And I never needed that other stuff because I had— Jesus had forgiven my sins. And when your sins are forgiven, you don't have to numb any pain that you caused others or others caused you. And it's— I'm not saying that every day was blissful. We go through trials just like everyone else. But another thing is, I think I never cared what other people thought because I knew that God approved of me, and so I didn't have to have a drink to go dancing and enjoy it. And what I found— and I— everybody knows that alcohol is a depressant. I used to go to parties where they drink, get high, do all kinds of stuff, and I drink my water. And I'll come— some of them were afraid and thought it was a narc, and they're like, no, she's just a Jesus freak. And I got to tell them about Jesus. Of course, I didn't get invited back too many times, but I just— I'm happy even in the midst of horrible things because this earth is not our forever home. We're going to be in heaven.

By the way, I'm curious, did you ever get married?

Unfortunately, I did not pick well. Yes.

Wait, you did? Oh, wait, you did not pick well and you did get married? Right, I see. Okay, all right, I got it. All right, we'll, uh, we'll be back in a moment.

I ain't drunk on nothing you can buy, just the gift from a woman and a look in her eye. What I'm on, you doubt me much, it's a little goes a long way kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm breathing, yeah, I'm feeling all right, I'm high on life. Hi everybody, Dennis Dennis Prager Happiness Hour.

Sober fun is the subject. People, vast numbers of people, do not think you can have fun without some additive, without being high, for example, or assume that only high is real, where the real fun is. Addicts tend to believe that They have a fear that if they do get sober, they won't have fun again. I suspect almost every addict has that particular fear, but a lot of people have it who are not addicts and who think that it's, it's necessary to escape the world in order to be high. And there was so much in the world to get high on. And that's not just a cute line, a throwaway line. I, I actually believe that. I I marvel when I think of all the things that bring me joy, and I think, don't any of them work for others? That's why I'm a big fan of hobbies and just interests in general. You know, I think one of the damaging aspects of modern life— the social media is, is a killer. Because it takes away from the joy of real life, the, the real life joys you can have by preoccupying oneself in the electronic world like that. But there's another thing that I think that ruins kids' ability to enjoy life— too much homework. Can't tell you the contempt I have for schools that assign a lot of homework. And, uh, I don't have particular fondness for the parents who believe that it's important. You're depriving your children of exploring life. The purpose of life is not to get good grades in high school so as to get into a good college, contrary to what vast numbers of parents think. What's your purpose in life once you get into a good college? There is none. You realize that? You've lost your purpose. Your whole life has been get into a good college. Okay, you get into a quote-unquote good college. By the way, there are almost no good colleges, so it's an idiotic thing to begin with. But you mean, you don't mean good in any event, you mean prestigious. So your kid gets into a prestigious college and then what? What's their next, what's the purpose of life after that? They're now 21 years old and they've graduated the good college. Now what? High-paying job. Whoa, whoopee-doo. Yeah, that's a biggie. So when did they have time? Again, I have to use my own life because the life I know best. I was very, very, very, very, very lucky in that I thought clearly at a very, very young age. I did no homework, none, for 4 years of high school. Graduated in the bottom 20% of my class, or as I often put it, the the top 80%. Couldn't care less. It meant nothing to me. In the meantime, I did what I wanted, and I got high on music and on international correspondence. My hobby, one of my hobbies, was shortwave radio listening. I mean, I, I developed so many joys of life instead of doing homework. It's— they have lasted with me my whole life. So it's, it's worth thinking. What joys does your kid have? Homework is not one of them. Getting into a good college does not do for your ultimate happiness what celebrating life does. Very good. Thank you, Dennis Prager. You're welcome. Uh, San Antonio and Margo. Hello.

Hello, Dennis. Hi. Thank you. Hi. Uh, the secret that no one tells you about having sober fun is that it is 1,000% more fun than being high on anything. My, my drug of choice was alcohol, and I was so scared to lose the best friend that I had for 30 years if I gave it up, and it's the best thing that's ever happened in my life. So very happy. There's so— I do so much more now, and I don't know how I ever managed to do anything, honestly, because it was a full-time job with my drinking.

Yep, yep. Well, I salute you. I salute every sober person. You, you have done something. Every one of you who has been who's chosen sobriety, you have conquered something that is equivalent to climbing Everest. I have tremendous admiration for every one of you. The odds are also that you have more wisdom than most people because you went through AA. 12-step programs have more wisdom than any university in the country, with very few exceptions. Okay, Julie, Asheville, North Carolina. Hello.

Hi there. Um, I was just going to say that, uh, hobbies, successful, I think, sober fun when you're a creator, when you're doing photography or gardening or, or making something, as opposed to at your point on video games being amusement. You can be amused high or drunk, whatever, but I, I don't see kids with the hobbies, as you said, like we used to have— knitting, sewing.

God, you say knitting or sewing to a, what is it, Gen Xer, they may not even know what you're talking about.

Well, yeah, um, there's a That people don't sew anymore just really surprises me.

Right. Well, they don't sew in, in anything. You— I like your point because I— what I take from it is in hobbies, you're, you're the actor. In amusements, they're the actors. You're the acted upon. So we're both making that point, but in different ways, and it's a very important one. Think about the homework thing that I said, though. That's a biggie.

Well, he said, hey, mister, can you tell me how far a walk it is to the nearest bar so I can turn around and run the other way? Got a Tennessee to tie one on. If stupid was a shirt, my sleeves would be long. I'm never too far from making my next mistake. Because it's hard to outrun the devil when he's sitting on your shoulders. And you can't feel the warmer side of life when your world's getting colder. You know I'm gonna be a better man for it when my dark days are over. But it's hard to see the light At the end of the tunnel, this side, sober. And he said, yeah, I'm a God-fearing man.

I'm going to summarize your calls. Don't hang up, otherwise I won't know what you said. If you hang up, I lose your comments. Final segment of Sober Fun, that's the subject of today's Happiness Hour. Does your kid have sober fun? Other than video games or some other social media thing? Are they doing 3, 4, or 5 hours of homework a night, wasting their time doing it? You think they're learning? You're fooling yourself. They're certainly not learning how to love learning. Which is all that matters in the final analysis. Yeah, I ought to do an hour on homework. God. All right, let's see here. Seattle Bill said hobbies all his life. That's right, hobbies. I've talked about it often, and now I've put two and two together and showed you why it's so important to have. That's sober fun. Keith in Carrollton, Texas. So much happiness and joy, he's been accused of being drunk. That's cute. I, I hear you. And let's see, Castleberry, Florida. Kevin, if you can't be happy sober, you can't be happy unsober. Well, they think they're happy when they're not sober. That's the point. And what they have— there's a— there is an adrenaline rush, but it's not happiness. People who use drugs at a young age won't discover how to have fun when they are not on drugs. Stacy in Dallas, that's the point. That's correct. In Louisville, Kentucky, Scott is restoring a '65 Ford F-100 while listening to me. Good man, that, that's, that's great. Okay, anyway, and Joyce and Mary, I thank you both as well. There's so much in life. If you need an artificial ingredient, it's a bad sign. Go to The Daily Wire, by the way, and click on watch and see the trailer of my series of lectures there. They're life-changing, I hope, and I think. Now call in on any subject.

The King, send out a line of Wayne Gretzky along with Luke Robitaille and Dennis Prager. Gretzky wins the face-off. He gives it to Robitaille. Robitaille gives it to Dennis Prager. Here's Prager to center ice with Gretzky. 2-on-1 break. Gretzky back to Prager. He stumbles and falls.

I'm not sure there are 5 things in life that bring Sean greater joy than that. Hi everybody, this is the Irish Catholic Channel. Whatever it's about, about you, about me, about life, about death. Yes, but first, this is it. It's the hour, whatever is on your mind hour. And don't be offended if I don't take your call, if I drop it. It is not any— in any way done to hurt your feelings. There could be 100 reasons Well, not 100, maybe 5 reasons why I'm not taking that call. 1-800-PREGGER, 776-877-243-7776. Needless to say, calls on audio equipment, photography, cigars, classical music, or— there's a 5th one.

Oh!

Fountain pens. All of those are particularly welcome on this hour, whatever the— whatever is on your mind hour. Okay, let's see here. We go to Los Angeles, the city That was Once of Angels and Eddie. Hello, Eddie.

Hi, Dennis.

Hi. I'm a huge fan. Um, at the very beginning of the pandemic, you said that lockdowns would cause mass destruction, and but you didn't know at the time that they would save any lives at all. And I mean, and with that approach to decision-making from the Bible—

no, I can't, I can't claim that it is. I read enough very early on to realize that the price being paid by lockdowns would be great and probably greater than any savings of life. And I had Sweden from a very early age as my, my test case because they didn't lock down.

And I think, I think you said that before Sweden decided not to lock down. And it was just one of those things I heard you say once and you didn't repeat it like you often do, you know, with good ideas. But I just thought it was brilliant. I mean, That because it turned out that that was the right approach.

Well, thank you for noting it. It means a lot to me that you noted. It's not for ego reasons. I, I have my ego in check. I'm a very normal guy. Uh, the reason that is important to me is that I regularly take positions that are different from the dominant left at your university, high school, in the media, in medicine, and they have all turned out to be right, so I should earn your credibility. That's, that's the reason. And the opposition, like the American Medical Association, should earn your scorn. I read very early on— I wrote very early on because I read very early on about the inevitable adverse consequences to humanity of the lockdowns. And it, it struck me that unless you had such a lockdown that people would be never allowed out of their houses, which is what they tried in China and it didn't work. And so as soon as they got out of their houses, of course, people contracted COVID from one another. Since that is not an option to keep people indefinitely indoors, and even if that is, it's not— it was not worth it. Also, I believed and still do in therapeutics like hydroxychloroquine with zinc. The fact that the New York Times mocks people who advocate ivermectin, for example, as a horse dewormer and only a horse dewormer only reinforces my belief that it's probably true, because whenever there's a controversial subject, the New York Times is always wrong. It's not always wrong in every article because it doesn't have an article always on a controversial subject, but when there is a left-right difference, the left is always wrong. And I have, I have the, the backup I tweeted it in April 2020. I kept reading about the hunger that would, that would result from lockdowns, the shattered economy, the children being set back. When you think about what college-educated people supported— masking 2-year-olds on airplanes— do you understand the cruelty as well as the idiocy of such a position? My heart broke for families that had to travel. How do you keep a mask on a 2-year-old? Anyway, none of you— only the people who work with me saw my great new invention, the yarmulke mask. Should I put one on, gentlemen? Because some people can watch me right now, right? At the Salem News Channel, is that where you can see— you can see the show? I am about to put on my famous yarmulke mask because I always have one on with me. And here we go, ladies and gentlemen, the Dennis Prager invention from COVID There you go. Now you can hear it's muffled. I am behind a serious piece of cloth here. And the joke is, I could pretty much get away with it. Am I right? You're cracking up, guys, but you gotta admit it's effective. And there you go, the famous Yamulka mask. All right, next, uh, let's go to, uh, Thousand Oaks, California. Nick, the famous Nick of Thousand Oaks. Hello.

Yes, sir, Dennis. Yes, I belong to a church that does not recommend its members vote, and it also, um, they make an exception for local issues like like PTA school bond, trash hauling, sewage disposal, but not on the, the issues that are facing the nation. And they all— another one of their supporting reasons is that it will bring division into the church. It will— people's political opinions will differ and it'll cause conflict, and we're to remain united. And I've been speaking out somewhat against that. I think that in this country, which was founded on principles of rights coming from God, and that the nation required a moral principle, an informed citizenry to direct its course. I was stunned when a couple of weeks ago you said that in your synagogue you do not discuss politics. And if that's, if that's appropriate, and I, and I'm bringing in division into the church by bringing up these issues. They say it's okay to sigh and cry about the abominations in the land, but we can't do anything about it, to discuss it.

Well, are there two separate issues that they're completely unrelated? Whether or not you vote and whether or not you use the pulpit as a priest, minister, or rabbi to discuss politics. The advocacy of people not voting is incredible to me. On what grounds would they do that? And as regards division— Yeah, well, no, no, I don't know. That's an excuse not to be morally involved. I think it brings shame on one's religion. Religion, not to be morally involved in the crises of the time.

Well, everything has been politicized.

Yes, you're right, it's very tough. So, all right, so, so look, uh, there— I, I have run Yom Kippur Rosh Hashanah services for 15 years, and some of them are now available to be viewed, actually. Whatever your religion or none, I promise you'll be deeply moved. And I— that service is a sort of refuge for people leaving left-wing rabbis and, to a lesser extent, left-wing priests or pastors. So I wanted them to have a quote-unquote— ironically, I'm using it— safe space. I believe that if I talk, in that case Judaism properly, people will draw the appropriate conclusions. If you understand the Bible, you cannot be a leftist. You have to pervert the Bible. Dennis Prager here. Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast. To hear the entire 3 hours of my radio show commercial-free every single day, become a member of PragerTopia. You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the Daily Show prep. Subscribe at prageropia.com.