under my supervision.

So you have to be with me.

So I'm going to gain some magical maturity.

I can just gain this ability to live on my own and not kill myself without, you know...

And the following week, I'll just magically be there, which before that, I'm totally untrustworthy.

So yeah, I came to him with... with my siblings, not the older one, he was off the rails somewhere.

But me and Heather and Stephen, we made a pact and we said, okay, we're not going to let the Christians get to us.

And

But long and short, it was about two or three years ago, you tweeted, in this case around the question of homosexuality and what the church is, teaches and says about things and all of a sudden as you will know better because you are living this still uh your college uh had a meltdown uh effectively fired you and even thought about putting you on to the the counter-terrorism the anti-terrorism police i mean talk talk listeners through what happened to you because it's just a mind-boggling story

it is it is very mind-boggling yeah i guess it kind of for me in a way this whole journey starts when was during covid um when we saw that strange you know contradiction of the evangelical churches and of course the liberal churches they're doing their thing um liberals are going to be liberal but it felt odd that the evangelical churches were so submissive to covid and whatever the government was saying about covid etc then at the same time perfectly happy to put some of that down with the blm riots happening and the support for that happening over in america and then um very quickly came across the atlantic and you've got evangelical churches that were reticent usually to talk about any significant issues that i i would say are vital for any church to be speaking and preaching about today like moral issues socio-political issues which affect um significant christian um beliefs such as you know abortion or various other issues of sexuality gender uh all those debates those are the front line issues of our day loads of churches that are evangelical and even would call themselves conservative we're just avoiding those they're avoiding those issues because they were so concerned with not causing a stumbling block for the gospel so oh that'll put people off we should be winsome we should you know we should get um keep our kind of powder dry for the big battles that are going to come down the line which never really come and they know that they don't know what these big battles are there's just these myths in their mind they're not really willing to fight for anything and they just want to keep things going keep things happy keep people coming they've made the sunday service kind of like a you know, a very open cafe almost, not quite in the sense of, I mean, some are literally a cafe, but I mean, literally it's almost a cafe like in the sense of, hey, we've got the best coffee, come to our church.

We've got really good kids working, stick your kids away over there and you can just come over here.

We've got really like contemporary worship and we're going to give you a nice 20 minute talk, which is just, you know, tells you the gospel again and again and again, never applies it to the actual issues that most of these people are facing.

And then those very churches I found when George Floyd died, started preaching about apologizing for whiteness and going all into CR, critical race theory stuff, coming in just subtly, almost saying, hey, the stuff that's happening out there is actually the gospel.

Multiculturalism is the gospel, et cetera.

And you're just like, this is so highly dubious.

And yet where we started, the church seems weak on that.

But Aaron Edwards disagrees.

I think the movement was already in motion to bring about a ceasefire.

Interestingly, again, if you look at that summer of 1994, the killing of Ray Smallwoods and the killing of other loyalists or attempted murder of other loyalists is something that's still going on.

Having spoken to members of Provisional IRA who were active at that time, they said the IRA was always going full pelt.

So actually, even though there was mood music amongst the grassroots paramilitaries and their associates that there might be a ceasefire, that didn't necessarily mean an end to the killing.

In fact, there, there is some evidence that loyalist leaders like Johnny Adair, who was regarded as a Young Turk in 1984, he had been arrested in the summer of 1994, and then he's behind bars essentially on remand.

There were many others in the UVF who were more, let's put it like this, militantly minded and probably would not have been supportive wholeheartedly of the ceasefire, and who wanted to, in their words, hit back against the IRA, who were arrested as well.

Here's Aaron Edwards.

as we, uh,

the new world, as we would say.

Yes.

So, you know, the door's open for your return anytime, brothers.

And so, yeah, I've been working as a theologian and a preacher and writer for many years.

I was working at college for seven years.

And then I think about five years in to working for this college, it was around 2021.

Can you speak to that?

Who else would have the ability to carry out these sorts of significant changes while fighting, um, a high intensity total war?

Well, I think those countries that are, that are at war have to do that in order to survive, and I think that that's been the, uh, motivating factor with Ukraine since 2022.

They started on the defensive.

Um, many people said that they could not defend themselves, especially if you take on board criticism of, of, um, of, you know, the failure to do anything with the intelligence warning that was provided.

But I have to say that even on the back foot, you're still in a strong position.

So I think in terms of military theory here, um, if I can just deal with that first, and then we can talk about where in the world, you know, those, uh, countries m-might be able to do it, uh, effectively if, if they were required to do so because obviously their existence is at, at stake or their survival as a state.

Um, in terms of the theory, the, the interesting thing is that special operations activity, that kind of activity only really works if it adheres to fundamental principles.

You know, d- have you seen any evidence over the years of Russian influence into, you know, different groupings, whether they be terror groupings in Northern Ireland or whether they be, um, d- uh, protest groupings in, uh, in London or, or, or Berlin or Paris or elsewhere? Uh, is this something that the Russians would see as a tactic?

What about, that's one part of the equation, what about yield? Will it be limited at all, either by El Nino and weather or fertilizer prices causing some cutback or not?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Some farmers have talked about cutting fertilizer with the customers that we really get into the nitty-gritty on their actual plans.

What I see isn't necessarily drastic cuts to fertility, but a lot of them have been over-investing in fertilizer, and they're sitting down with their agronomist and saying, what's the bare minimum for that I can put out there to raise a decent crop.

So it's not really a reduction.

They're just very mindful of usage.

And here's where the double crop is really interesting.

Is that accurate? And why do we see that?

When did you start to feel lonely?

I think what's interesting actually is that my feelings of loneliness predate moving to Athens.

I think when I meet new people and we start to connect, there's always a point in describing myself to people where I try to encapsulate my demeanor and just who I am as a person.

And the phrase that I tend to use a lot is that I run sad.

People run hot or run cold, but I just kind of run sad.

I'm a pretty melancholic dude.

Solitude, I think, can be good.

Can you tell me practical things that you did to try and make that pie bigger, I guess?

So what, what do you say to this?

No, it just ...

Yeah.

It's just like, uh, I mean, I, I just think it's funny that like we ...

It's this sort, this notion that there was this, this rabid, aggressive ho- like homophobia.

I think there were obviously elements of people who like unreasonably hated or dehumanized gay people.

That definitely did happen, um, in, in sub- in areas of society.

[laughs]

Um, what was it that made you join the force in the first place?

So when I was, when I was in college, uh, the 9/11 terror attacks happened.

And, um, you know, that, that really touched me.

I watched it on television, and what I saw was all the first responders, you know, particularly the, the NYPD, just rushing in and trying to help people.

And, and I thought that that's what I wanna do with my, with my life.

What, what, um, what, what did he do in, in this?

Yeah.

So Sergeant Navarro, he actually alerted me to w- what was happening in front of us.