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Folks, you're listening to Ask Me Anything. It's this the

Archmontax issue, but we're playing what I did the other night. It was a live thing on YouTube and Facebook. Ask me anything. People ask me questions. Here it is.

Well good evening everybody and welcome to the first ever Salem asked me anything event. And we decided to do this series of events called Ask Me Anything.

Because we know that our listeners love to have a one on one opportunity and they never do get it. Usually you're calling in or maybe you're at an event with thousands of people.

But tonight we have 20 people that have chosen to pay a little extra money and get a chance to be one on one with our first host Eric Mataxis.

Well, first of all, thank you for having me and thank you Phil Boyz for discovering me. I was a nobody until you put your finger on me and you said you you yes you.

I want to make you a star. Eric, your subtitle is a search for the meaning of life. That's a big assignment for one.

Well searching for the meaning of life is not a big assignment finding the meaning of life is a big assignment.

And the book honestly, this is like the story of my life up until I had this conversion experience at age 25 and let me tell you was dramatic. It was miraculous. It's the end of the book. And when something like that happens to you, you'll never forget it.

It changed my life literally overnight. It was an encounter with the God of the Bible. It was a kind of thing I thought happens to other people who never happened to me. It happened to me. And I thought I need to tell that story. But in order for that dream to make sense.

You have to tell everything coming up to that point. So I tell the story of growing up with my mom and dad and you know an immigrant household my dad came from Greece, my mom came from Germany.

And so I think it's just what that experience was like there are a lot of very funny stories in the book. It's all true. Every, every insane funny story is 100% true. I hate when people stretch the truth.

But ultimately, you know, I get into my time at Yale where I kind of was lost looking for the meaning of life. Is there does life have meaning the people of places like Yale act like they've kind of moved past the idea of meaning and truth. And that's kind of for the people in the heartland, you know, fly over people who cling to their guns and Bibles. And I, I guess that I thought, well, I don't know what I think what I learned in the church growing up was not really clear. And so by time I graduated, I was very lost.

And that's the end of the book is my really longing to know what the what the meaning of life is and being really unable to find it and God finds me. Let me put it that way. But I don't want to spoil the story. But I wrote it just because there are tons of people that are exactly the way I was then, you know what I mean, they're decent people, but they just don't know

where to look or whatever. And I said, I want to reach those people. So people who are different from me, theologically people who are different from me politically, I wrote this book for those people.

And it doesn't mean that people who agree with me won't love it. I think you will. But I really hope that people who agree with me will give this book to people who are not on the same page. And don't say anything about it. Just say, this is a fun read. I think you'll enjoy it and see if

you know, I would say see if God uses it in their lives. That's that's ultimately why I wrote the book. I want God to use my story to reach people in the way that he reached me.

Well, all of our viewers tonight on our Ask Me Anything audience that you see many of them on the screen. Do have a copy of this book. We sent it to them.

Let's hope that they enjoy it and recommend it to their friends. If you don't have a copy of the book, you can buy it on Amazon or anywhere where books are sold.

And let's do everything we can to get your book to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, because we know how much that annoys them at the New York Times.

And we want to keep them and we want to annoy them as much as possible. And I was kidding. I was kidding about killing some people. I probably wouldn't do that. I certainly wouldn't admit to it. But the person I am desperate.

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