Avoiding Babylon
Avoiding Babylon was started during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. During these difficult and dark days, when most of us were isolated from family, friends, our parishes, and even the Sacraments themselves, this channel was started as a statement of standing against the tyrannical mandates that many of us were living under. Since those early days, this channel has morphed into an amazing community of friends…no…more than friends…Christian brothers and sisters…who have grown in joy and charity.
As we see it, our job here at Avoiding Babylon is to remind ourselves and those who enjoy the channel that being Catholic is a joyful and exciting experience. We seek true Catholic fraternity and eutrapelia with other Catholics who, like us, are doing their best to live out their vocation with the help of God’s Grace. Above all, we try to bring humor and joy to the craziness of this fallen world, for as Hillaire Belloc has famously said:
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!”
Avoiding Babylon
16 Kids and Counting with Conor Gallagher
Imagine living in a house where every day feels like Thanksgiving! Join us for a heartwarming and often hilarious chat with Conor Gallagher, author and CEO of TAN Books, who opens up about the wild ride of parenting 16 children. With ages ranging from 23 years to just four months, the Gallagher home is a vibrant tapestry of surprises and constant activity. As someone who also grew up in a large family, Anthony couldn't help but relate to Connor's tales of chaos and love, drawing parallels to my own experiences. From the unexpected joys of having twins to managing the delightful mayhem of daily life, Conor’s storytelling is full of authentic humor and rich insights.
Our conversation shifts to the deeper layers of family life and its impact on faith and personal growth. Reflecting on our own journeys from impatient young parents to more grounded and mature fathers, we discuss the evolution that shapes not just us but also our children. We explore the unique benefits that younger children in large families enjoy, particularly the supportive network of older siblings and the vital role of creating a nurturing environment where values and faith are naturally absorbed. Here, we underscore the responsibilities that rest on parents' shoulders in passing on beliefs, emphasizing the importance of self-growth and strong family bonds.
Finally, we embark on Connor's unexpected journey from a legal career to running TAN Books, a vibrant Catholic publishing company. Sharing the challenges and triumphs of acquiring TAN Books during its bankruptcy phase, Connor reveals the delicate balance between profitability and ministry. We dive into exciting projects, like translating the works of historical saints and developing fresh approaches to Catholic apologetics. This episode is a testament to the transformative power of Catholic literature, showing how it can inspire and deeply touch lives while navigating the ever-evolving dynamics of family life and personal faith.
Parenting for Eternity: https://tanbooks.com/products/books/parenting-for-eternity-a-guide-to-raising-children-in-holy-mother-church/
Well-Ordered Family: https://tanbooks.com/products/books/well-ordered-family-the-family-management-system/
Sponsored by Recusant Cellars, an unapologetically Catholic and pro-life winery from Washington state. Use code BASED at checkout for 10% off! https://recusantcellars.com/
Sponsored by Recusant Cellars, an unapologetically Catholic and pro-life winery from Washington state. Use code BASED at checkout for 10% off! https://recusantcellars.com/
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Sancte, sancte, amare morti decadast nos In tes peraveros.
Speaker 2:We don't usually do pre-records. We usually do a live show, so we actually usually start our videos with. When that ends, we'll usually have a silly intro video and that kind of leads to a little bit of silly banter. But, like, doing a prerecord is not usually something we do. So we are interviewing Connor Gallagher.
Speaker 1:I do have a bio we can read if you want.
Speaker 2:All right, go ahead, read the bio. Let's do it professionally. Go ahead, rob.
Speaker 1:Let's try it anyways. Give me a couple seconds to pull it up.
Speaker 3:We'll keep talking for a little while. Yeah, it's not very professional. Rob Bio's pretty boring, so I don't care if you skip it, man, connor's never seen our show.
Speaker 2:He's in for something fresh, that's all right.
Speaker 3:Thank goodness I have something fresh because, as I was telling you, I've done 65, I think this is 66 interviews in the last six or seven months, and and they're all the same I hope this is different, because I definitely will be because I all right.
Speaker 2:So I watched you on kennedy's channel. Uh, I think it was last month or a couple weeks ago. I saw you on kennedy hall's channel and I like I was looking at it and I'm like, all right, there's got to be a better way to do this, because the way kennedy presented it was kind of like an infomer it and I'm like, all right, there's got to be a better way to do this, because the way Kennedy presented it was kind of like an infomercial and I'm like I don't know if that's the way to go with it Like I think like you have 16 kids, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, two grandkids yeah 16.
Speaker 2:What are the ages?
Speaker 3:So the oldest just turned 23 two days ago, on the 28th feast of saint thomas aquinas under 23.
Speaker 3:That's why yeah, and I know that because I went to his little uh, we had lunch today to kind of celebrate his birthday a few days late and uh, yeah, so all the way down to um four months. So that little one is destroying my wife's sleep. And I've lectured her. I sit her down and say listen, this is ridiculous, you need to sleep through the night. And she's stubborn resistance, she just won't do it, she won't, she refuses to honor her father's direct.
Speaker 2:I mean okay, so.
Speaker 1:I don't understand You've done 66 interviews since June and you have a four month old yeah, 66 interviews since june and you have a four-month-old yeah, that's, that's impressive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my wife's good, you know, but it's just part of the job, so it's what you know do you have twins in there?
Speaker 2:are they all single?
Speaker 3:births yeah, they're awesome. I got twin seven-year-olds little boys. They're fraternal and they're like complete opposites in every way, and that was that was uh purgatory on earth when they were born, um, and then all right, so slow down, let me get in here.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna get some things out here, all right, so there's seven. What number in order are they and when they come?
Speaker 3:they're 11 and 12 11 and 12.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you have 10 kids.
Speaker 3:Your wife gets pregnant with twins yes, guys, because I'm telling I'm mr open to life, right, I got my pro-life badge you know 100 and I'm understanding.
Speaker 3:Hey, I'll tell god, look, just give me one, one shot at a time. And we just take it one shot at a time and every two years or whatever it is, and it's like we never had him. Every two years it's always like 16 months, 18 months, but then all of a sudden, boom, he hits me with twins or her with twins. I acted like I had the hard job, but you know it was a hard pregnancy is on the father yeah, it's right.
Speaker 3:I mean I always say that she you know it's it's not fair because, look, she could gain like 30 something pounds during pregnancy. I would do the same and yet she would lose 20 pounds in eight minutes. I mean that's another eight months to get back down to my pre-pregnancy weight. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:They get that nice bed in the hospital and we get the little folding chair that doesn't lay flat even.
Speaker 3:Yeah, everyone says to my wife they say you look amazing for having 16 kids. And I'm like how about me? How about me? And they don't even make no reference about how I look for having 16 kids.
Speaker 2:I was hoping you guys would say something about that. I grew up in a house with, with nine, so I'm third of nine, and I thought that was a lot like like it was. It was kind of mayhem. My mom had six kids under the age of seven at one point or so, I don't know five kids, five kids. So it wound up we had my parents had four kids. Then there was an eight year gap where they were using artificial birth control and then my parents had like a reversion, came back to the church and stopped using birth control and then had five kids in a row like in seven years. And my mom had like three or four miscarriages in there also. But I remember just going to friends houses and like the joke was always like, uh, oh, so your mom pregnant again. And I'm like, yeah, like are you, are you serious, your mom's pregnant again. But to have 16, I can't even fathom what life is like in the gallagher home and like I want to kind of get a glimpse into the life of the Gallagher home.
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, I mean, if you ever had Thanksgiving dinner, when it's like your whole, like your extended family comes over, it's just like every day. You know people always say, oh, how was Thanksgiving, how was Christmas? Oh, so busy, whatever, like it's just like that every day. So it's really not that big of a difference. But no, I mean seriously, it's not any different than another family. I mean there are certain dynamic differences but you get into first of all, so obvious. But people forget this you don't have 16 babies. You know that's what works. They actually grow up and leave. You know.
Speaker 2:So not just leave the older ones care for the younger ones, like I remember? Big time, like I helped my mom with the little ones.
Speaker 1:Come on now.
Speaker 2:I know you, I'm telling you I'm gonna ask your brother, joey, all the old they were. They were like my own kids, I'm telling you. I changed diapers. It wasn't like my mom was caring for every little kid.
Speaker 3:No, no, I call it mid-level management. The older kids are mid. Seriously, this was an hour, maybe two hours ago my seven-year-old one of the twins, thomas he changed the baby's diaper. He took the baby and changed the diaper and came back in. It's like he's seven. He can do that. Most 17-year-old girls today don't know how to change diapers and he does. A seven-year-old boy they have definitely.
Speaker 3:Look, you don't have all babies at one time. My dinner table is very busy, it's very chaotic, but it's no more different than any other family. Here's actually where my deal is better, in a sense, because when you get to a certain point, you have a ton of kids and I think that's 10. I mean eight, nine, 10 is a big family, you know. 12, 13 is huge. But when you get to an enormous family, you sort of surrender to the situation and you say, okay, we're not going to do what we tried to do when we had five kids.
Speaker 3:When I had five kids, like when I had five kids, we had, you know, I think we had maybe have like eight kids, but I had. I remember I had five kids, guys on like three different baseball teams, and so we had three teams going all at one time it was just nuts, and then, like my daughter had something else, I think she ran cross country at the same time and it was. It was getting insane. And so we said, okay, if we keep having kids, we have 10, 11, 12 kids. We can't, we can't do this, it's impossible. I remember telling my wife one day she, like we could not figure out how to get all the kids to their game or practice or whatever. And I said, look, you just got to put the 10 year old in an Uber and send them to the field. And she's like you're crazy, that's not safe. And I was like you're right, give him my gun. They put him in the Uber.
Speaker 1:I was going to say that Give him a gun, he'll be fine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, we had to surrender to some of the things that your normal family does right, and sports was one of them. So we had to give up the young athletics right. We don't do Little League anymore. Little kids, you know, 8-year-olds aren't on soccer teams anymore. What we did is like we have a homeschool co-op kind of thing where they go to CrossFit and so they get really. They got really into CrossFit. My 10 year old is is big time into CrossFit right now, and then when they're in high school, they play rec ball, they play, they play flag football, they play rec basketball. My cop, my, my 19 year old, is probably going to play basketball for Belmont Abbey next year and all he ever did was play rec ball in high school.
Speaker 3:So you know, my point is is that it's just a lot of families. When you have a bunch of little kids and I get it, I was there, I was the little league coach, I don't know how many years I coached in a row when you have that, you kind of feel like it's necessary. But when you're catapulted into a huge family or your family goes through any kind of major upheaval, like people that have a disabled child or somebody gets really sick in the family, you start realizing that little league and travel soccer is not the most important thing in the world. So actually now, guys, I have more dinners at home with my family. In the evenings, my families are more relaxing than they ever were before, when I just had a bunch of little kids. Now it's much better, and my kids still play sports in high school. One of them is about to play college basketball. It works out. But you actually have to surrender to some of the worldly expectations and then actually, I'm telling you, your life gets a whole lot easier after that.
Speaker 2:How do you manage the one-on-one time with each kid? Because look like that it really is a difficult thing, right, Like each kid, my all right. So my mom has had this gift where she made every one of us feel like we were her favorite. I'm telling you, if you ask any one of my siblings, every one of them will tell you they were my mom's favorite. It's just even the sister, even though all the wives, like all my brother's wives, they all think they're my mom's favorite daughter-in-law. My mom has this way of making every one of us feel like we're the most important person in her life and it's a very difficult thing to do and I mean, I can't imagine, with that many people, just to really have that one-on-one time with each kid.
Speaker 1:We're going to have our fourth in August and my oldest, you know, we asked them when they just found out about a month ago. We asked them if they were excited. And my oldest goes. Yeah, but that just means less time with mommy, and I don't get enough time with mommy now.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that yeah, it's kind of hard.
Speaker 1:How do you give that sort of time to each one of them?
Speaker 3:Well, you just asked, you just hit on. I think what's the biggest cross that mom and dad have to bear? It's not the dishes and the laundry, it's actually like a good loving mom and dad want to spend a lot of time one-on-one with each kid, so that's like the hidden cross that I have to bear is that I don't get to spend time with, say, my 10 year old son, my he's 11.
Speaker 3:I forget they change every year so, but the 11 year old son david. I don't get to spend near the amount of time with him as I did my first couple songs, right, so it's a cross I have to bear. But here's the thing, you know. To steal a line from my absolute favorite catholic theologian hill, hillary Clinton, she said it takes a village. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. She's right, it does take a village. Here's the thing. The environment has to be joyful.
Speaker 3:Of course you have to look for opportunities to spend alone time with your kids. For example, I'm getting on a plane in three days and I'm flying to Alabama to go be on EWTN, a TV show, and talk about this kind of stuff. I'm taking my 11 year old with me and my wife's like why are you taking him to a TV station? I'm like that's pretty cool. And then she's like what else is around there? And she finds out that NASA has space yeah, in Huntsville, in Huntsville, huntsville. So I called my secretary and said get all the tickets you can to this thing.
Speaker 2:Are you going to break it to your son that the moon landing is fake while you go on that trip? He already knows, he already knows.
Speaker 3:I mean my kids are homeschooled. They learn a very important. One of the most important points in US history is the faking of the moon landing.
Speaker 2:Can I tell you what it's like from the kid's perspective a little bit, because so I was in the first batch and when we were like you were saying, like when you have the first few, you're able to dedicate a lot of time and a lot of attention to them and do things with them. Like my dad took the older ones to disney and like we would go to like trips like that. But then by the time the younger ones came, our trips more like sunnycroft ranch, you know, like we'd have to like do things that he could actually afford and he had the big van and we'd all pack in it and we would go um when I and I also had a much younger version of my dad, like a much younger version of my dad. So my dad when I was, when I was 12, 13 years old, my dad was in his early 40s or late 30s, early 40s. He would be able to go snow skiing with us and do things like that where. But he also had a bad temper.
Speaker 2:And then, once my younger siblings got the experience, they got a much calmer version of my dad, but also a much older version of my dad, where he wasn't up to the physicality of it as much anymore and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:All right. So I've thought about this subject a ton. You're asking a great series of questions. I've thought about this a ton. That's exactly what's happened with me. I was Mr Young and energetic, and I was also an a-hole. I mean, I could really blow my fuse. I still do sometimes, but I go nuclear way less than I used to. I'm calming, I'm maturing. So what are my older kids or younger?
Speaker 1:How old are you?
Speaker 3:Connor 43. 43. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're my age. That's funny dude.
Speaker 3:You got some kids, but with the younger kids first of all, your younger brothers, your younger sisters. They had you too, not just your older dad. Yeah, they have the older siblings. They have a much better village, a much better tribe that they're growing up in, and also guys. I want to write a book on this very subject because and I've done some research on it the amount of saints that come from the bottom of a huge family is enormous. There is something to that and I'd be willing to bet that the ratio and this is what I can't prove yet, but I want to that a higher percentage of saints, a much higher percentage of saints, come from the lower part of the family than the top part of the family.
Speaker 3:Catherine of Siena, number 21 or 22 or something crazy, right? I mean Teresa of Lisieux she was one of the babies, right? So it goes on and on, and I think it's because if mom and dad are trying to live the faith, they're trying to have a virtuous home, they're trying to have a religious home. The older siblings contribute to that. It's a net positive. You know, in our world all this talk about nasty teenage girls and the teenagers are nasty and there's constant fighting. I'm sorry I haven't had that experience. My teenage daughter, who's now an adult and has a baby, you know she was an absolute joy to have my next daughter's 14. I had a lot of boys and now I have a lot of girls, but I got in touch with my feminine side as I got older. But but you know, but my so I haven't had this like nasty teenage thing.
Speaker 3:I don't we don't, we don't know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, my daughter, my point, my point is that that's their career they're, they're not left out.
Speaker 3:It might be the very inverse.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's really interesting, you're saying that because, especially because my parents' conversion came at the later stage, so the younger ones got a much more religious upbringing than the older ones. So, and that's what went on the path. Like my, I have my younger sister. She was. She was like studying a book. She went for a vocation, she, she was staying with the what which one was the passion is non, yeah, it's, it's, it's.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you're saying that with the younger kids they really they got. They got to soak in a lot of a more patient father too. I think that has a lot to do with it too, like you're calming down in your older age.
Speaker 1:And it's not just that, like I've, my kids have taught me so much about fatherhood and even about about the faith, right, um, just, and I only have three right now and the oldest of six, but I've I've learned so much from raising them that I know that I'm a better father now than I was six years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a tremendous man.
Speaker 3:I mean I'm, I'm constantly learning dude. I got a long way to go, but you know, I kind of joke that god gave me so many kids so I could keep trying to get it right you know.
Speaker 2:Well, let me, can I ask you this, Because, especially, I know a lot of people that watch our show like, for me too, like my kids as they're getting older, what do you, what do you find the best way to actually instill the faith in them? Like, how is it really just raising them in this big family and them just soaking in the values of it? Or like, what is the catechesis for your kids where they actually understand the reasoning behind all this and have all of your kids actually made the fate their own? I think that's like I think so many parents are struggling with. Like, how do I make sure my kids like the one thing we have to do as parents, especially as fathers, like your greatest task is to hand the pearl of great price on to your children. If you fail at that, that's so harsh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think about this constantly. I believe wholeheartedly that it has almost nothing to do with quote unquote catechesis and it has everything to do with formation and there's a difference. And so this is not about opening the skull. Insert Baltimore catechism and close the skull. Guys, that's not it. Okay, what it is, cause they can just carry around chat GPT in their pocket and they got it. So that it's. That's not it. Excuse me, I keep coughing they. What it is is, it's creating. I've talked about this a lot and the Well-Ordered Family book, which I'm not trying to just talk that.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. Well, that's the thing that was part of what I was getting at with the way I'm handling this is the way Kennedy presented. It was just an infomercial for the book, where I want people to kind of get an understanding of who you are and where this experience comes from and where the wealth of knowledge for the book comes it's about the environment that you create for your children.
Speaker 3:I don't know the better words to call it. It's an environment. I call it an ecosystem because it's actually multiple little environments that all come together to make an ecosystem that's unique to Anthony's family, unique to Rob's family and Connor's family. Each one's a little different. Now, what is that ecosystem made up of, right? Well, again, an ecosystem is like you have an environment of animals, you have an environment of plants or water, and all these things come together and it really supposed to feed off of each other. That's what an ecosystem is like a self-contained environment. Well, in my book I talk about, there's six external factors, and I think this is very, very helpful for people. You have to orchestrate, you have to be the architect of your environment, your ecosystem for your family, and it's made up of what I call it the strep situation, the strep ecosystem. It's an acronym.
Speaker 3:We all have strep throat. In fact, we got strep throat at my house, which is probably why I'm coughing. One of my daughters, my five-year-old, got diagnosed with strep today. Okay, and we've had like three other kids in the last week. It's a total pain, but strep today, okay, and we've had like three other kids in the last week. It's a total pain.
Speaker 3:But uh, strep um, social environment. Okay, this is their first of all, their social environment, technological environment. If you don't think these cell phones are an environment and xbox, no, it's. It's an environment unto itself religious environment, recreational environment, educational environment and professional environment. And that's you and your wife's professional environment and it's your teenage kids who get a job at the bagel shop. That environment strep social, technological, religious, recreational, educational, professional. I think if you look at your life, every situation that you guys are going into it fits into one of those categories. Right, and you have to think about each one of those and say, okay, have my wife and I constructed a situation where our kids are safe in their social environment, they're safe in their technological environment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Are they good in that?
Speaker 3:So you cannot people say how do you raise 15 kids? I don't raise 15, 16 kids. I manage environments. I manage environments. My kid today see, at this very moment that we're recording this. I got two kids that are at basketball practice right now, the 17-year-old's driving, and they got a buddy with them and their buddy's spending the night at our house. It happens all the time. But I know most of the kids that are on the basketball team. I know who they can hang out, who they can't hang out with, I know when they're going to be home. I'm managing this environment is complete and I'm able.
Speaker 3:Then, because there's very tight constraints around each environment, they have tremendous freedom within that environment because I've made the environment safe. It's like you make a room baby proof, then the kid can crawl around and do whatever the hell they want to do, right. But if you don't make the room baby proof, you got to chase that kid all over the place and you got to say no, no, no, no. So spend a lot of time thinking about their educational system. Who are they hanging out with on school? Can you give them a device and let them have some kind of freedom on it because the proper constraints are in place? Can you allow them to participate in sports or that church activities or whatever it is, and give them extreme autonomy and flexibility within it, because that's a safe environment?
Speaker 3:We miss out, guys, because we put our kids in totally. I want to curse, but I'm not. Total crappy, total crappy environments. And then we try to insert catechesis into their brain as if that's going to save the day and it never does. We had an entire generation in the 1950s my dad, your dad. They were raised Catholic, put in Catholic schools, they had nuns and habits, they had priests in collars, they had the Baltimore catechism, they had all the catechesis in the world and half the generation left the faith because by the time they were teenagers, they had absolutely a horrible environment in which they were maneuvering in in the crazy sixties.
Speaker 3:The catechesis does almost nothing if the environment is not correct. So that's the answer to the question. You've got to build the environment.
Speaker 2:I agree with that a hundred percent. I also think a lot of it was fathers at some point left religion to the wives, like fathers kind of kind of just took a backseat and thought religion was the wife's job and the wife would take.
Speaker 2:Kind of kind of just took a back seat and and thought religion was the wife's job and the wife would take care of it, and that kind of happened in my house, you know, and it's a very uh detriment, like I think, when kids see the father take the faith seriously, that has a huge effect on them so you've seen the stats on that, right, I mean the stats are real.
Speaker 3:Like the church, mom taking kids to church really doesn't do anything statistically. Dad's taking kids to church does everything and that's. I mean that came out of like harvard, which has an ulterior motive. But I mean they, you can't. It's such a clear statistic you can't get around it. Dad has more impact than this what was your upbringing like?
Speaker 2:did you grow up in a big catholic family? Did you have a later conversion? Did you and your wife discuss like, okay, we're going to have a very fruitful marriage beforehand? How did that all come about?
Speaker 3:I was raised in a great family of six kids. It was huge for the day and time. I didn't know anybody that had a bigger family than us. I'm raised in the South, right, so North Carolina. When my dad grew up here, it was less than one half of 1% Catholic, I mean, so he really grew up a minority big time. And so when he was growing up as a Catholic in North Carolina in the 50s you know no kidding he had to hang out with the blacks and the Jews because that was the only people he could hang with.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean and you know it's because there was serious, serious anti-Catholicism, right, and I think that's why I became such a good basketball player, you know. So, anyway. So by the time I was Catholic, like we had a couple of Catholic schools in town, but it was not a very big. It was not big and I was the only Catholic kid in the neighborhood and I was Catholic. We had a couple Catholic schools in town, but it was not a very big and I was the only Catholic kid in the neighborhood and I was introduced as the Catholic kid. I felt some of that. Now, charlotte, which is where I grew up, every banker from New York and New Jersey has moved in and invaded. We call it the second invasion.
Speaker 1:It's funny because another New Yorker is going to invade there next weekend.
Speaker 2:We're going there to speak at a men's conference again.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, okay. Are you coming to Charlotte? Are you coming to Charlotte? Yeah, I'll see you there. Yeah, I'll see you there, oh you'll be there yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, excellent yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So anyway, you know, my point is is I did not grow up in a culturally Catholic environment, right, my home was Catholic and when you were, you know, there was no cultural Catholicism. So if you were going to be Catholic, you had to mean it. You had to mean it. And there's something good about a Catholic being a minority, you know what I'm saying. Like you have to take it serious. And so I had to learn very quickly to like kind of stand up for myself and be proud of my faith because I didn't have any friends in the neighborhood or whatever, and be proud of my faith because I didn't have any friends in the neighborhood or whatever, summer camp or whatever. So, no, great parents love me a lot. Um, taught me the faith as best they could.
Speaker 3:And then when I get married, though, it's like you know, my wife and I didn't have a goal of like, hey, we're going to, let's, let's set like the world record here and get our own reality show. You know, let's do that. You know, let's just let's have a reality show and be more normal than the weird Amish people. No, it wasn't like that. But I did hear once that they get 50,000 bucks an episode. So I was like, honey, we got to think about this. We can definitely do a reality show about you. We got to think about this. And my wife looks way better than the Amish wives, I'm telling you so we'd get?
Speaker 3:we'd get $65,000 an episode, okay so, but anyway, my point is no, we did not have a perspective that we were going to have it's huge family. It wasn't a race, but we learned very quickly that we went to Steubenville together and it we really did learn that people abuse NFP and they use NFP. It wasn't complicated for me to see artificial contraception as a problem. I got that. But then you know it was drilled into us somewhere online that you know NFP should be a pretty extreme circumstance. You don't just do it because you want a Mercedes or you want an extra, you know you want your vacation house or whatever. You need a damn good reason. And so with that, you know, we just kind of were open to life at each, each kid, we'd reassess and we'd we'd think how's my wife doing? Is she physically good, is she emotionally, psychologically good? We always knew I was completely unstable, so that was just a given.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm never, going to be, but we, you know. So we always had to assess and we took it seriously. And then, but we were like, yeah, we don't really have a reason to postpone this for very long. Sometimes we wait a little bit with NFP, but so anyway, one kid after another man, that's just kind of kind of what happened. And then we had twins, because God has a sense of humor. Yeah, so there's no goal.
Speaker 1:And we started young, we, and we started young, we're still going, she's 43.
Speaker 3:I'm 40. How old am I? What did I say? You said 45. Yeah, I'm 45. She's 43. I'm sorry, I'm stupid, I was born in 1979. I'm 45. She's 43. Yeah, yeah. So, because it's funny, because I usually end up talking about my wife's age I think it kind of threw me off and so that's dangerous, talking about my wife's age, I think it kind of threw me off and so, um, that's dangerous. Yeah, no, I know, I know. So I just think that each kid you have to prayerfully consider and you need and you need to remember people out there, you know good Catholics need to remember that you really can have a contraceptive mindset, even with NFP, you really can, and that's something that people need to take serious.
Speaker 2:How do you and your wife make sure that you two still have that healthy? Because I try. To any couples I meet I always tell them like if you and your girl are good, the kids are going to benefit from you and the wife being good. Like, no matter what you have to work on your relationship with your wife. If they see the parents love one another and they get along and they're friends, it's just going to trickle down to them no matter what. Don't let your kids come between you. But how, when you have that hectic of a household, do you and your wife make time for one another?
Speaker 3:It's easier than when we had five little kids, because when you had five kids seven and under or whatever you're a slave to them, right, I mean? And you have. You have no middle management, you don't have babysitters in the house, no one can drive but you, it's just so. When I meet parents that kind of are in that situation, I tell them and it's actually reassuring, I'm saying you're in the worst part, it's going to get better from here, you know. So, rob, you got, you got three little kids. Is that right? Is that what it?
Speaker 1:was Three, six and under, with a fourth on the way, yeah.
Speaker 3:You're in the worst part, rob, okay. So I say that about 12 years old, when the oldest is 12, things start getting a lot easier because they're able to really babysit. You can actually leave, you know, go down to the restaurant down the street and then when they get 16, that's kind of the promised land, cause you never have to go get milk at nine o'clock again at night, like you can send them, you know. But then when they turn like 18, 19, guess what? You can get on a plane with your wife and leave, okay. So it's like you know now, my wife and I except for when you have a baby and you're chained to that, I mean, that's just like an anvil around your ankle. But you know, I think it's our life is easier now because my wife and I have more flexibility. We can go out whenever we want to. We have built-in babysitters, so we get a lot of time alone.
Speaker 3:Do you have to be very intentional about it? Oh, hell, yeah, you really do, and you have to make that very important. And when you go out, you know, you can talk about kids and stuff, but try to come up with creative things to talk about other than logistics. You know, if you go hang out with your wife, all you do is talk about logistics, about all the athletic events next week, try to talk about other stuff. So I really hate the whole thing.
Speaker 3:Like, and I've told priest, stopped telling men, date your wife, date your. I men, date your wife. I'm getting so tired of hearing date my wife. I know I got to date my wife, but just find something else to say. It's just like somebody that doesn't know anything about relationships. It's what they say. So of course I date my wife, but you really do have to put your wife number one and it does not hurt your kids for them to know that mom is number one and you're number two. You're a great number two, but your mom's number one. So, yeah, we have to do it. We have to protect our relationship and we're a lot better at that now than when we were a lot younger. But yeah, you got to be ruthless with it, otherwise you're just sucked into the abyss of kid land and you have to guard against that.
Speaker 2:Which kid is your favorite? Yeah, yeah yeah, um well, I got one in my head, you know here's the thing anthony 100, believe he's his mom's favorite yeah, every one of us do that like oh, you ask my kids, my kids will tell you that dad's favorite um all right, so let's get right now right now.
Speaker 3:It's well, you don't want the answer, you don't want the answer.
Speaker 1:Oh he does?
Speaker 2:You don't want to talk?
Speaker 3:I love controversy, go ahead. So you know, in one way I can say that my two oldest, because they've just given me grandbabies. So that was a pretty amazing thing.
Speaker 2:You amazing thing, um, you know my 18 year old wait. Is there an aunt and uncle older than the?
Speaker 3:yeah, niece yeah, yeah, yeah. So my, my granddaughter is older than my daughter, right, so, yeah, so my baby, monica, named for augustine's mother, was born an aunt. She was an aunt, aunt Monica, in utero, right. So it's kind of cool, and so my wife and her. I watched my daughter and my wife grow together, right, it was amazing. It was like, um, father of the bride, part two, whatever people always say that but um, it was, uh, it was very cool, but you know, it's, it's interesting.
Speaker 3:I have an 18 year old son named son, named Peter, and he lives in my. I have a guest house on my property and he commutes to Belmont County College, which is about 30 minutes away. I bought this property for that reason. And why am I kind of saying him right now? It's not because he's my favorite in all circumstances. However, since I have an 18-year-old son living on my property or is he 19? Hell, I can't remember, maybe 19, whatever, he is probably 19. Old enough, yeah, old enough. And my point he's a young adult, he has a part-time job and we have become like friends as adults, right, and so, and that's just kind of happened very quickly, like, your kids go from obnoxious teenagers with bad haircuts to like young professionals, like real quick boom. It just kind of happens, and it's happened with him in the last six months, you know what I mean. And so he's popped up into this maturity level and now it's like. It's like I have one of my best friends living in my guest house.
Speaker 2:And so my son's 19. I got that going right now too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there you go, right. And so it feels really great to um not have to feel, of course I'm parenting, but he'll, he'll text me at like nine o'clock at night and say, hey, you want to come watch this movie with me? I said, sure, last night I'm having a little campfire with little kids. Um, just a few feet from where my, my home office is, I got a little campfire right outside my home office and um and I'm I have little kids out there and they go to bed, and then my 19 year old comes out and we sit there for 30, 45 minutes by the fire and it's just like two buddies. So in a sense, it's not my, he's not my favorite, but he's like the situation is my favorite.
Speaker 2:He's at an age. Yeah, the age, it's an awesome age because you know you don't have to like correct every little thing they do anymore, like he's.
Speaker 2:Because there's an interesting thing for the kids too, because I I'm, uh, 17 years older than my younger brother, or 16, maybe 17 years older than my younger brother. So I moved out. I was married at 22 and he was like five, you know. So I didn't know him until he turned around 17. Like I knew him, but like I didn't know him. Then, when he turned like 17, he could come and hang out with me and it's like I made a whole new brother when I was like 30. It was a really interesting time, you know, and I was like that 30 was a really interesting time, you know. But let's, let's get into the book a little bit. So Rob read Parenting for Eternity and he was blown away by it Like he was.
Speaker 2:like he couldn't wait to talk to you, so Parenting for Eternity. Rob had read that was one that he was excited to talk to you about, but you got a new one out too, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I have. I'm always'm always cranking out a lot of books. So two books that have come out recently Well, or Family, which is like All right, so Parenting for Eternity. This is my favorite book that I've written.
Speaker 1:I love that one so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yeah, thank you, and I would say that it's like the why we parent. It's not a how-to book, right, but it's about why we pray the rosary with our kids, why we raise them in the liturgy or certain devotions, why we talk about angels and demons, why we have to think about the four last things in regards to our children. So it's a why book. But then this is like this is cool, but it's like a how to. This is like how to get order in your life, because you're spinning out of control and pulling out your hair and your wife's on meds. This is kind of like how to. There's different purposes for different books, but I'd rather talk about Parenting for Eternity. I've talked about Welder Family all the time. I mean I'll talk about both, but they do kind of fit together. But, to be quite frank, this one is more important. Thomas Aquinas says grace builds upon nature. Right, and so you know you can't, in other words, you can't just go pray, you actually have to work. You know you have to put things in motion. You can't just pray for your kids. You have to build structures and environments and raise them and feed them and clothe them. And you got to make money and you got to pay bills. You can't just go to adoration. So you know, the scripture is very clear on that. So this book, well-ordered Family and the six-part system I've created, that's the natural order. Now, the reason that this is so important today, guys, is because the world is insane. The most rare thing is common sense. This is about how to structure your day-to-day life with your family. That's the natural order of things and once that's clear, then the grace can flow like a tsunami. But God needs us to get our natural order straight so that he can pour grace on us enormously, so that he can pour grace on us enormously. And I think that the Parenting for Eternity book, which is real small, it's more about the supernatural side of parenting, if that makes sense, and that's where the grace really comes in.
Speaker 3:How did you get the gig at 10? So I got a master's in philosophy and my law degree and I was practicing law, um, for a little bit I did real estate closings and estate planning and some basic stuff and then I went off and clerked for a federal judge and that's a two year gig and that's kind of like the best job a young lawyer can have and I was totally unqualified but he liked me so I got the job and I did that for two years. Awesome, awesome job, great Catholic judge. And when I was almost done with that, my dad, who had been a successful business guy he gave me a call and he said son, I hear that a company called Tan Books is in bankruptcy and we had known about Tan and so he said why don't you come and work for me and basically represent me as my lawyer and try to acquire this company out of bankruptcy? And he had started a little Catholic publishing company. It didn't really do anything at this point but it was just kind of like there because he just wanted to be in Catholic publishing. I didn't really do anything at this point, but it was just kind of like there because he just wanted to be in Catholic publishing.
Speaker 3:So once my clerkship was over, I went and I worked for my dad basically as his lawyer, and I went up to we were in North Carolina. Tan was located in Rockford Illinois. It was a very long and cumbersome bankruptcy proceeding and I worked with the lawyers up there and for about a year I worked on winning this case to convince the bankruptcy court to sell Tan to us and we prevailed. And one day I'm standing up there in Rockford Illinois and we finally win after all these court cases. And I call my dad and I was like, dad, you own Tan now.
Speaker 3:And I and I was like, uh, what do I do now? And he's like, well, why don't you go over to the building and run it? And I'm like I don't know anything about business. I'm a lawyer, you know, not a very good one, uh. And he said, oh, you'll figure it out. And so so I ran, I drove over to the tan office and like knocked on the door, like, uh, hi, I'm the new boss, hi, you know, and it was very, very strange how many people were working there at the time.
Speaker 3:It was about 35 people, I think Many people. I never forget my very first day in business, never read a business book, never did anything. I had to lay off 13 people day one. I did more day two and so it was. But here. Here's the thing. This is how stupid I was. So. So I'm sitting there and I start calling in people that I had to let go of and I knew, like, we don't need accountants, we have them back in Charlotte. There are certain things that we knew we could let go of. So I'm bringing people. I said listen, I'm not, I'm not firing you. The bankruptcy court fired you. I'm just not rehiring you. You see, I'm just not rehiring you. And it did not work. It was like they didn't care. I was the monster. They hated me. How many?
Speaker 2:years ago was that Technically?
Speaker 3:every person was laid off and I had to figure out who I'm going to employ. But that sales pitch didn't work at all to make them feel any better.
Speaker 1:They who I'm going to employ, but that sales pitch didn't work at all to make them feel any better.
Speaker 3:They still lost their jobs, so, but eventually, uh, that was um October 8th 2008. I'll never forget it.
Speaker 2:So we kind of consider that we're having to go. Yeah, so I was.
Speaker 3:I think I was 29 at the time and uh, and so so, and and so so. Anyway, eventually we relocated Tan to Charlotte where we lived and and we've been running ever since and it's had unprecedented success and growth and it's very secure and it's amazing and it's it's it's grown by multiples in every category. But you know so, my, my father, I mean I'm the, I'm the majority owner. Now it took it took quite some time, but you know, I, I did my kind of put in my sweat equity over years and years and I I've been blessed with amazingly good people and, and you know, just, I can't believe that you know, I remember sitting down and writing out goals of growth and success and the number of books we could distribute each year, and I remember, like putting numbers down on paper, like pretty early on, flying back and forth to Chicago to go to this, this place, and we so far surpassed all those numbers.
Speaker 3:Already I had no idea how much God would really bless this thing. So it's, it's very successful. Um, but you know, what the thing is is, every day of my life, guys, every day of my life, I find out some story about how a tan book has really helped somebody, I mean, the stories just come in.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure.
Speaker 3:And you have to remember to like make it like my shelf is tan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there you go Right and you have to remember that, like, sometimes it's a job and you're like, oh you know, but you have to remember we're a for-profit business, we're not a church, we're not a nonprofit, it's a family business. But you have to remember that it is also a ministry. And so my dad always said you can do good and do well at the same time. This is a good job to have. You can support your family, you can help a lot of people support their families, but the impact you can have. And so I've been really beginning measuring success much more recently since we got our financial squared away because it was a bankrupt company Once we could buy bread and milk, then what I could say then is okay, we want to measure our success by the impact that we're having. So we measure about how many books go out the door, how many views or how many open rates, all the metrics that you're measuring, because our goal now is impact. Since we're financially secure, we can really think impact versus money.
Speaker 2:What's it like? Because most people are consuming books audio books now, I would assume, not even hard copy books anymore like the media is changing so much, like, and even like acquiring authors nowadays, like, of course you have your legacy authors that have been writing books forever, that I'm sure you you get those, but how do you even go about, like, finding a new author that's going to have any kind of reach? Because it seems like everybody, like the people that write books are the people that have audiences already built it. Like, how do you get a new author to blow up? It's gotta be a difficult thing.
Speaker 3:Well, part of my secret sauce, all right. So I'm gonna let in one of my trade secrets that I don't want any of my competitors to know right. And it's that dealing with dead authors is a hell of a lot easier than dealing with living authors. Yeah, you know, they don't complain about their royalty check.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're there. They're bringing something back into publishing that's been out of publishing for a long time.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's a very legit strategy and so it's very clear. You can look at our catalog. We do do living authors, Like we definitely released new books all the time, Okay, I think. But you know, at one point we were publishing over 60 plus new books a year. That's more than one a week, and we're way down on that now. And so we've we publish less titles but want to sell them five times as much as we used to. So we're very, very selective about the living authors. That we do and we can be a little bit more loose with the dead authors. But, seriously, some of the most important things we're doing, we have this series of books called the Tan Resurrection Series.
Speaker 3:Here's the thing. This is amazing. Check this out. I think this is Catholic publishing at its finest. There are so many great saints, great authors throughout history that have untranslated works. They're stuck in Latin, never even put into English. So let's take St Bonaventure. Okay, A doctor of the church. I cannot believe that there are a ton of stuff that he's never had translated into English before and we're getting that translated. We find the Latin text. We're translating it into English for the first time. I mean, I'm like the second other than the translator. I'm the second person on earth to ever read some of these things in English.
Speaker 2:Do you have a full-time Latin translator on staff?
Speaker 3:We have multiple contractors that do it. Oh, okay, multiple contractors, yeah. So, for example, thomas Akempis, known for writing Imitation of Christ. Now, everybody knows Imitation of Christ, one of the most important books ever. So what if you found out that there was like a dozen other books that this guy wrote that are still stuck in Latin and you're like, why are they stuck in Latin? So we have published multiple very small books. They're short little things One on humility. Another book he wrote called Meditations on Death, and it's like he envisions a guy on his deathbed and the Grim Reaper is coming and like tempting him to despair. It's a very creative thing written by the author of Imitation of Christ. Oh, my goodness. And so there's so many cool things St Ambrose, st Anselm, there's so many great old saints never before in English. That's the stuff that gets me really excited, because these saints need somebody to keep pushing. There's always going to be another apologist and always another Bible scholar.
Speaker 2:You talk about it all the time man, it's like the way, especially with the way media is now.
Speaker 2:but Catholic apologetics is just kind of getting a little stale and we need some like, and to me, the best way to do Catholic apologetics now is to do it through history. So even you talking about like going back and finding these old saints, that's such a great way to do apologetics now, because I think church history is the way to bring people into the church now. It's you know, people have heard all the Sola Scriptura arguments. I mean I think one of the first videos we had go big was like making fun of the video that says the greatest argument for Sola Scriptura you've ever heard. It's like it's just how many times can you watch a video like that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, let me tell you about another example, if you don't mind. This is the first time. I've no one knows about this yet. So it was kind of like my my content guy might be like why are you talking about this yet? But I had the idea a long time ago.
Speaker 3:It was like listen, I have a tremendous respect for all the Bible study scholars out there. There's tremendous. I mean I'm friends with many of them. But then when you realize that I mean they're actually right here behind me, like this anti-Nicene father, the big church father set, which you guys have probably seen, these right, I mean all the church fathers, guys, they wrote the best Bible studies of all time, and all of our Bible scholars are really just making footnotes to what these guys did, right. So so it was like it's like this I'm not going to use a name because I respect all the Bible scholars out there, but if you were going to go and do like a Bible study by Joe Smith, dr Joe Smith I hope there's not a real Dr Joe Smith, but let's say the Dr you could study the gospel of John with Dr Joe Smith or you could go to this church over here where Augustine is going to be teaching it.
Speaker 3:Who do you want to go to? Right? So I've created Alexio Divina. I'm not really interested too much in like Bible study. I'd rather use scripture to pray and like enrich my interior life more than like do Bible study, right? So we've created Alexio Divina with the fathers, and so we take one book at a time. Okay, so like the gospel of John. Well, augustine wrote the best commentary on the gospel of John, okay? And so one page has the text like gospel, the chapter one from the gospel of John has the text like chapter one from the Gospel of John, and then it has a short commentary by Augustine explaining that passage. And then we take you through a meditation and prayer based on Augustine's commentary. So you're really doing sort of a Lectio Divina with Augustine.
Speaker 3:Then we're going to do the same thing Chrysostom on the gospel of matthew jerome, on the gospel on the book of job. It goes on and on and it's just like, let's study scripture, please.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want cornelius alapide on revelation okay, wow, wow, okay.
Speaker 3:I learned something new every day.
Speaker 2:That's a big, seriously, cornelius alapide, it's only in lat, in Latin, from what I hear, there's no English text of it. Cornelius Elapidae, and it's on Revelation.
Speaker 3:Oh, I've heard of the Elapidae, I've heard of it. That's like an amazing commentary on Scripture. I think he did like a whole Bible On Scripture.
Speaker 2:He does all of it, I think some of it, and it is mind-blowing like he talks about the typology of how, at the end of time, like how, how the pope and and the and the um, and like the cardinals and bishops are prefigured by the high priest and the sanhedrin, and he goes through how, like at the end times, it's going to be a star that fell from heaven. It could be a poem. It's like it's pretty risque stuff, especially in context of the things we're dealing with in the church. All right?
Speaker 3:Well, look, if we do that, it's like dedication to Anthony at Catholicism. Oh my goodness, If you do it.
Speaker 2:I will. I will help you sell as many copies as possible.
Speaker 3:All right, that's awesome, but this is what we do, you see, and like. This is exciting, but here's the here's the challenge for me as a modern day publisher how do I get people excited about guys who died in the fourth century? You know, and I think we can, but we have to. The brilliance is not knowing Augustine's brilliant. The brilliance is in repackaging it to where you can consume it in some edible way, because it's lost in those big fat books and no one's reading it anymore. They're reading all the modern day Bible scholars, which are great, but we're missing this tremendous heritage that we have.
Speaker 3:St Bernard of Clairvaux, who I'm completely addicted to right now and I'm going to write my own biography on him wrote the greatest commentary on the Song of Songs. You guys know that book, kind of like a risque book, the romantic, kind of erotic book, right? He wrote this four-volume set. The Song of Songs is six pages in the Bible, guys, it's six pages, and he wrote four volumes on it, right? But I now know why, and so we are going to do Alexio Divina with the Song of Songs by Bernard of Clairvaux.
Speaker 3:That's how we, as Catholics, should be encountering the Bible. We don't need to study the Bible, we need to pray the Bible, live the Bible, and study is a part of it. Same thing, full circle, guys. Back to our first point in the conversation. Catechesis is overrated. In my opinion. It's more about formation, because when you have formation, the catechesis comes with it. If you pray scripture, you're going to learn scripture. So I think we put too much focus on education all the way around. We need to work on the interior life.
Speaker 3:Tan is all about the interior life. Tan doesn't do a lot of catechetical books, doesn't do a lot of apologetics and we don't do a lot of cultural wars, right? I mean, yeah, I know the church is corrupt and the government's corrupt. Congratulations, we all know it. And the moon landing was faked, we know it right. But guess what? After I'm pissed off, after I read all the articles about all the corruption, tomorrow morning Conor Gallagher has to climb out of bed and be a saint. And what's going to help me do that? Reading about the corruption in the church or reading St Francis de Sales on how to fulfill the duties of my station in life? And so TAN is dedicated to helping you guys and your spouses with your interior life, as opposed to just getting you more and more pissed off about everything that's going wrong in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good philosophy. This was awesome, man. I wasn't sure how to handle it because I did, like I said, the first time I saw you on Kennedy's show and I thought Kennedy handled that interview horribly. I'm not kidding, I watched it with Robin. I go, this guy. You know I love Kennedy.
Speaker 1:You're going to have to text Kennedy right now and warn him.
Speaker 2:We talk all the time. But I'm like, I don't know, he kind of presented it like an infomercial and I didn't like it. I'm like, don't know, he kind of presented it like an infomercial and I didn't like it. I'm like I kind of want to dig into connor a little bit, like get to know him and and maybe hear some like real. So what books do we want to promote before we hop off?
Speaker 3:well, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2:Um I just started my own podcast um and so you got anything to promote, for sure yeah, connor gallagher show and it's on Spotify and YouTube.
Speaker 3:It's on our tan YouTube channel, um, but you know, check out. You can just search Conor Gallagher show. We've had some great guests. And, by the way, the second episode I was shameless and put my wife on there and it was basically me and the co-host asking Ashley about how you raised 16 kids. Cause I'm I was funny, I was stupid. I go around talk about it as if I'm the expert. I mean she's the expert. So it was awesome. It's got a lot of views because everyone loves hearing this lady talk about raising all these kids. But yeah, we've had some really good guests so far. I got everybody from Rick Santorum signed up, I got Bishop Strickland signed up, some really good guests coming. So I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 3:But the books you know, one of my most recent releases is you have only one problem. So I write these little books. See how thin that is. You can read it in like an hour and the whole idea there, guys, is like we don't and just stop saying we could do another episode on this. But I promise not to make it long.
Speaker 3:But here's the thing I have this amazing insight that I've gotten from the church fathers, we don't really have a whole bunch of problems like financial problems, social problems, health problems. No, we have one problem and that is we have not trustfully surrendered all of those sufferings to our Lord. If you surrender everything, then all of those perceived problems, you see they're just sufferings. Sufferings are fine because they redeem us. So I've tried to stop saying to myself guys, I don't want to say I got all these problems. I want to say no, no, no, I got one problem and I got a bunch of sufferings. It's a better way to think about it and it might sound just like words, semantics, but tell yourself from now on you got one problem and you got a hundred sufferings, and those sufferings are redemptive. And, by the way, saints always get through those sufferings and say, oh, it was a blessing in disguise. You're right, because God knows exactly what he's doing by prescribing you the remedy, by giving you suffering. It's like a bitter pill that you have to swallow and it brings about your redemption. It's not a problem.
Speaker 3:A problem is something you got to fix. A problem is something you got to change. You don't have to change your sufferings because God might want you to have it. You do have to change one thing, and that's a problem, and that is you don't fully surrender to divine providence. So that's what the little book is about. But of course, yeah, there's parenting for eternity and there's Welder family. But just come to Welder familycom or tan bookscom, either one, and you can see some of these books. But you know why, buy Connor Gallagher's books, don't buy my books. Forget my books. Go buy the saints books. They're the better, they're the better. People Read the church fathers, read the saints, and we got a ton of them. Read those guys. Forget me, you don't need my stuff.
Speaker 2:You need saints stuff. Well, you got us our interview with Bishop Schneider last year and that was a really, really like a turning point for us. It was like the first time we wore button-down shirts and everything for that one. It was great. So we appreciate that, and if there's anything we can ever do to help you out, you let us know. But so the Conor Gallagher show on YouTube anything you guys buy a tan is going to help Conor out.
Speaker 1:So and I'm going to have links to everything we talked about in the description. So thank you. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3:We talked about in the description. So thank you yeah.
Speaker 2:We're looking forward to meeting you in North Carolina next week, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the request I always. I try to finish every interview at least. I've started recently and realize I've wasted a lot of my years not doing this. Your viewers, if you had any, if you got anything good out of this, you got to say a prayer for Connor Gallagher that he stops being an idiot and becomes a better husband and father. Father, say one little prayer for me and I'll. I'll be eternally grateful.
Speaker 2:Sounds good, brother. All right, rob, take a sec. Connor, hang out for a second. After the credits roll, we'll talk. We'll talk in the green room real quick, all right, we'll see you guys next time. Thank you.
