Matt (00:01.065)
OK, well we have Sean back, so now we're going to jump to the thought provoker this week. Unless Sean, did you want to say something about in and out getting rid of order 67? Sean's like no. Yeah, I'm by bad. Every time I hang out with Sean, he's like. He's like 6 767.

Melanie (00:05.83)
Woohoo!

Shawn (00:13.582)
It makes me sad. want it.

Yeah, I love seeing all those kids. Yeah, sad it's gone.

Matt (00:24.687)
Alright, so first up this week, I started doing this a little bit more for Sean because I know he loves church related topics. So this is like as church related as I can.

Shawn (00:34.732)
Doctrinal church related topics. This isn't doctrinally church related.

Matt (00:40.105)
Kind of, it could be. Okay, so the church announced the new mission presidents that are starting their service in 2026. And I sent the list to the host of the, I asked chat GPT, no chat GPT wasn't good at it. I asked Jim and I go through this list and tell me anybody that's noteworthy. And so then it gave me this list that I sent to the host, but making the list is Robbie Bosco.

the quarterback of BYU when they won the championship in 1984. He's going to be a mission president and other famous people, or I would say like noteworthy people. The question is this, does the list of who gets called as mission presidents tell us anything meaningful? There are just as many people who are just simple, ordinary church members who get called as mission presidents as there are noteworthy church members. And so the question is, why does the church post this list?

Melanie (01:33.736)
So I've got to say, my preparation for this question was very different because you did not tell me this was a Gemini-generated list of the notable mission presidents. I thought the church had like released a separate one or something and I was like, that's weird.

Matt (01:41.511)
You

Matt (01:47.593)
I see. Yeah, the church at some point they'll tell us their bios, but it'll only be stuff like, so-and-so served in this calling at this point in their life.

Shawn (01:48.91)
interesting, yeah.

Melanie (01:58.962)
Fair, fair.

Matt (02:00.253)
So tell us about your prep Melanie, tell us what you concluded.

Melanie (02:03.224)
So I thought if the church was releasing a list of like celebrity mission presidents, that would be really weird. But otherwise, I think like providing a list of... he's the only one who cares about the quarterback.

Matt (02:09.986)
I see.

Shawn (02:10.83)
Yeah, just Matt. Only Matt, only your dad did that.

Matt (02:15.241)
Well, no, we've got somebody who was an executive at Qualtrics and we've got CES directors and we've got somebody who co-founded Orange Soda and the CEO of Priceline and the co-founder of Beachbody. Like there's a lot of like big name people.

Melanie (02:35.708)
I noticed how you miss, was it Michelle D. Craig? Sister Eubank? There was someone on that list, like a former Relief Society president?

Matt (02:41.571)
yeah. Michelle Craig was the first counselor in the young women's general presidency and she and her husband will be in the Canada Toronto East mission. That's true. I did skip her.

Melanie (02:52.132)
Yeah, that sounds kind of sexist to me, Dad.

Matt (02:55.657)
Well, so Sean, it matter who the people are that get called? Why do they do that?

Shawn (02:57.144)
hahahaha

Shawn (03:03.822)
Well, I mean, there's two questions there. Why they do it, I think it's just fun. They haven't always done this. I think just within culturally, it's just fun to see, I know that guy. Like Robbie Bosco, all of us from a certain generation, we know that guy. We're like, that's fun. That's cool. That's nice to know Robbie Bosco who played at BYU and then two years in the NFL is still an active member of the church. That's great. That's great. So I think it's just fun. I don't think there's any like strategy here. I don't think.

Matt (03:31.421)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn (03:32.506)
The second question was, there any kind of like, is there a difference between like, yeah, any meaningful? I mean, we live in a lay leadership church, right? You have to have means in order to go away for three years, right? So naturally you're going to be calling people who have means. Is that possibly?

Matt (03:37.179)
Anything meaningful?

Matt (03:50.451)
Yeah?

Matt (03:55.057)
Yeah. Or people who are retired, I guess, right? You have to be retired or although I think I don't know for sure, but I think our mission president, because he was a native Ukrainian, I think the church helped support them on their mission. I think there's some people you don't have to have means to be a mission president. I think I think if you don't have money, they'll still call you. I guess you have to be able to leave a job for three years.

Melanie (04:20.016)
Yeah, I think this might have changed over the years though, because both of my mission presidents, one was a lawyer and one was a dentist.

Shawn (04:20.419)
That's right.

Matt (04:27.815)
And so they could leave their jobs and come back to it. Yeah.

Melanie (04:30.682)
Mm-hmm, and they had very nice like quality of life

Matt (04:36.231)
Yeah, as a people you

Shawn (04:37.292)
Look, as time goes on, I'm out. Go ahead.

Matt (04:40.904)
No, you go ahead.

Shawn (04:42.862)
I'm more more convinced as time goes on that when the scriptures say be anxiously engaged in good causes and just go and magnify callings, it doesn't always mean, in fact, probably less than often means wait till someone calls you to do something and then go magnify that calling. I'm more and more convinced that what the Lord wants us to do is be proactive in going out and being involved in our neighbors and our church members' lives, like engage and serve. And I think these callings

we do put a lot of status kind of, I don't know, we give them a little too much status. Mission presidents are awesome and that's a cool opportunity for them. It's a cool opportunity for their families. And if they're good at what they do, they really have an opportunity to touch 500 lives like kids, right? Like do good with 500, 600 kids. That's awesome. But I guarantee you, you've influenced in a Bishop Rick 500, 600 kids lives. You know I mean? It's like, I think we put a little too much.

Matt (05:29.502)
Yeah.

Matt (05:38.91)
Yeah.

Shawn (05:40.462)
weight in there's a there's a status here. So piling on top of oh they're a mission president. Oh they're a C-list LDS celebrity.

Shawn (05:53.006)
I don't know, it's a little distracting I guess. just fun for us though, right?

Matt (05:53.372)
Yeah.

Matt (05:57.767)
When I was younger, I so desperately wanted to be a mission president. was like, that would be the coolest calling. I would love that so much. And there are times.

Shawn (06:05.57)
You don't get a prophotized. You don't get a prophotized, man.

Matt (06:08.443)
I know. And, and my son who's currently serving, the more I hear about what's going on in missions, the more I'm like, cause the mission president has to interview every missionary, like every six weeks or something like that. And you have to, maybe it's every month you have to do transfers. You have to like work with, there's a lot of work to be a mission president. And so in increasingly, I'm like, I don't think I want that.

Melanie (06:15.528)
You

Matt (06:34.227)
But I do know people and I at different times in my life of sort of when I was thinking about my career, I thought, okay, is, would this put me in a position that I could be called as a mission president if I needed to be called as a mission president? But I don't know that I would do that now if I were starting all over again. I don't know that I would think that way.

Shawn (06:54.946)
Would you do, so go ahead.

Melanie (06:55.098)
Yeah, I do think.

Matt (06:55.165)
Melio

Melanie (06:59.74)
I do think like thinking about Sean's comment and what you said, dad, about like how admission presidents are called if I was released of their callings. I do think it's important to recognize that we have opportunities to serve outside of callings. And so as much as like, yeah, I would love to be a mission leader one day. I think that would be so fun. I think it's important to say like, how can I serve where I'm at right now? And how am I gonna do that? More so than say,

while I really wish I were a mission president, because then I'd be in the cool kid club. Because that's what I say right now, you know?

Matt (07:31.4)
Yeah.

Shawn (07:31.95)
I've got an idea of how to satisfy Matt's desire to be in that cool kids club. I'm going to start publishing a newsletter and every, I'll just announce everyone's callings. I'll just announce it. I'll publish it. I'll announce it. Like Matt Miles is primary teacher for the three year olds and you've done this and you've done this and you've done this and that you get that way you get that recognition. You get with that.

Matt (07:38.952)
Ha!

Melanie (07:39.15)
I'm

Matt (07:46.062)
man.

Matt (07:52.425)
Valiant tens, valiant tens.

Matt (08:01.059)
No, but I like the idea, Sean. But it is.

Melanie (08:04.602)
Anytime someone in my relief society is like, my dad's a bishop right now, I'm gonna be like, well guess what? My dad's a primary teacher.

Matt (08:11.689)
So I had, I got my temple recommend renewed on Sunday and the guy in the stake president, he's a friend of mine from my department. So we're just sitting down visiting and he's like, so what's your calling right now? I'm like, I teach primary and we're talking about how awesome it is. He's like, I'd love to serve in the primary. And I was like, well, you only have like another five years in the stake presidency. And he's like, I enjoy my calling. I'm like, I'm sure you do, but

Melanie (08:32.156)
you

Matt (08:37.865)
In the end, he's like, I'm going to just try to vicariously enjoy your calling through you because I don't get to have a primary call. Like, I don't know. There's like the callings you have, you tend to love them, right? No matter what they are, but more and more, I think primary is where it's at because it's not so demanding and you sure get the same blessings that you get it. Even if you're a stake president.

Shawn (08:58.382)
But Matt, it does seem like as we get older now and we've experienced a big chunk of all the callings that exist, it does seem to me that it's less about status and it's way more about, this is service. Like we're investing time. And so like your primary calling, like I was the music leader in primary for a long time. And in the beginning I was like, what, why am I doing that? But by the end I was like, dude, I have made such impact.

Matt (09:06.579)
Yeah

Matt (09:13.192)
Yeah.

Matt (09:18.921)
Shawn (09:27.072)
on so many of these little kids. Like we are best friends for life and the service, the commitment and the magnifying that I put into it is way more important than whatever title or whatever false kind of reputation comes with a title and a calling. I don't think it's about the titles, right? Like my buddy who's in the bishopric and then he was in the state presidency and now he's in primary. And I hated seeing all the attention that guy got.

Matt (09:27.367)
Yep. Yep.

Shawn (09:55.182)
in the bishopric and the state presidency, and now he gets no attention from anybody. Why? That's so lame.

Matt (10:00.137)
I don't think that's, that's the way it should be. That's the way it should be. Jesus didn't get any attention for his callings, right?

Shawn (10:09.038)
Yeah, but why I don't like that we give attention to like stake presidents and bishops and not the primary people. It's just, we're all serving.

Matt (10:09.286)
Okay.

Matt (10:15.281)
Yeah, I've thought a lot about that. think it's, I think it's because everybody recognizes that bishops and stake presidents are doing so much more work than everybody else. And it's sort of like, I don't want to put all that time into the church. And so it's like gratitude, right? You pray for them. You're like anything to help you out because you feel bad for them and all the work they have to do. I think it's that.

Shawn (10:37.08)
That was my point. My point, Matt, was though that you in the primary calling need to put as much time into that calling as they do.

Matt (10:44.179)
Sean, when I was a bishop, was easily 20 hours a week, just bishop stuff. Like, my heavens.

Shawn (10:49.208)
So what your kids in your ward don't deserve 20 hours a week. You don't love them. Their souls aren't valuable.

Matt (10:53.395)
They do not. They do not need. That's what I'm trying to say. Their souls aren't valuable enough for me to spend 20 hours a week. No, it's like 20. My lesson that I do one lesson per month and on a good day, I get 25 minutes for that lesson. So you're saying I should spend one hour per week per minute of teaching that I'm going to do in that class.

Shawn (11:18.904)
Go visit those kids at their homes, deliver to them a spiritual message, invest in them, man. I don't know.

Matt (11:23.849)
I'm invested in them. it just doesn't take as much time. Sean, Sean, you get the points for that because that was there was very the way you made me feel shame for not spending 20 hours a week in primary. That's like point worthy. That's really good.

Melanie (11:40.804)
Amen, hallelujah.

Shawn (11:40.984)
Good. Nice.

Matt (11:42.249)
Alright, next up. Ex users tell grok to undress women and girls in photos and it is saying yes. Yeah, the site is filled with AI generated non consensual sexualized images of women and children. Owner Elon Musk has responded to this with laughing emojis. There's some countries are like trying to put a stop to this. I read recently that I think it's Malaysia and perhaps Indonesia.

Shawn (11:50.251)
WOAH!

Matt (12:10.493)
have banned grok in their countries and England is investigating it in some way they do things. But anyhow, there's two comments on this story that I thought stood out. Some people say that this situation exposes blatant hypocrisy, arguing that those who claim to protect women and children are willing to tolerate or encourage AI-driven sexualization and harassment when it targets their political opponents. Others say the deeper danger is that unregulated AI

creates cover for the powerful, allowing real evidence of abuse to be dismissed as fake and shielding elites from accountability. So the question is, because I know Sean hates laws, what should be done to solve this problem?

Sean hates laws. If I say make it illegal, Sean will say boo boo, don't make it illegal.

Shawn (13:02.158)
I'm for just laws. I'm for laws that protect our freedoms. I'm for laws. I'm not against laws. But Melanie, your opinion here is very important and you're here because the people have requested you to be here. So let's hear it.

Matt (13:11.026)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Melanie (13:15.119)
You're just avoiding the question, Sean.

Matt (13:18.597)
No, no, he's... Yeah, he's... You go first, Melanie. You tell us. Tell us why it's so wrong to make deep fake nudes of young women.

Shawn (13:18.853)
I'll have my turn.

Melanie (13:20.303)
Okay, okay.

Melanie (13:27.954)
I don't think I should have to tell you why this is so wrong. I think the point raised about like obscuring actual abuses is very real and very valid because while right now AI generated images are like not impossible to spot, if they get much better, it could become very, very difficult to tell when there are actual legitimate crimes being committed against defenseless populations.

Matt (13:30.153)
Hahahaha

Shawn (13:33.678)
That's not the question.

Melanie (13:54.478)
And I also think it's a horrible invasion of privacy to have AI generate an image of somebody's body that they did not consent to. And I think that if that is happening, the platform should be shut down unapologetically.

Matt (13:54.547)
Yeah.

Matt (14:07.913)
I remember Melanie, this would be like maybe 10 years ago. You were like, do not post photos of me on Instagram when your account is public because I don't want people taking those images. And I was like, you're so naive. You don't understand the way things are. But when Sandra read this story, she's like, Whoa, I don't want to put any images online ever again because people can just take those images and create deep fakes based on those images.

Melanie (14:35.27)
Right? It's dangerous.

Matt (14:37.001)
and you would both feel violated. I'm different. If somebody did that with me, I would not feel violated. I would feel proud that they chose me to be like the deep thing. So I, on a...

Melanie (14:49.416)
So do you actually think that you would feel that way?

Matt (14:52.935)
I think I would. I'm very vain and I'm very like, like, yeah, if it was my face, you could put anything, you could put my face on anything and it would make me happy. And so that's why I don't think I understand. Yeah.

Shawn (15:03.778)
Because it gives you attention it draws attention to you,

Melanie (15:06.684)
See, the thing is, remember that comedian on the Carnival Cruise Line, or whatever cruise you like to talk about? I know a lot of women, we've had conversations about catcalling, right? And a lot of the times when you've never been catcalled, you're kind of like, maybe that would be flattering, maybe it would be a compliment, you know? They think I'm cute. And then the minute it happens, you just feel degraded and violated and like a piece of trash. And you don't anticipate the way you're gonna feel until that happens.

Matt (15:18.344)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (15:36.935)
Okay, I can appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. So in that context, then I say that this should never happen and nobody should ever be able to make money off of something somebody doing that to somebody else.

Melanie (15:50.214)
Amen.

Matt (15:52.261)
Okay, Sean, what do you say? Wait, so how do you stop it? I think I'm with Melanie on this when you stop it by, if that happens on your platform, I don't care who does it. If it's your platform that hosts that material, your platform is gone. You're shut down. We ban you like we did tick talk because

Melanie (15:52.722)
So Sean.

Melanie (16:09.0)
Hey!

Shawn (16:13.752)
So you guys think that we need people out there in the government policing everything that gets put on social media by individuals, Because this is a nice, easy one to be like, that's horrible. That's horrible to do something like that to someone. So let's do something about that. But what if it's not so clear cut? What if, for example, Matt decides to testify of Jesus Christ and someone at some point says, we don't like that, cut it off.

Like, so you guys think that we should be policing everything that everyone does with threat of we don't get platforms that allow people to have free speech.

Matt (16:53.085)
I think that there's limits to free speech. and so just like we limit certain activities, there's some kind of speech that's not allowed, right? So we wouldn't allow, for example, if a platform was making death threats to the president of the United States, you're going to hold that individual accountable for making death threats because that's not allowed. So some things just aren't allowed. Yeah.

Shawn (17:13.134)
Because that's against the law. But that's against the law. Making a death threat to someone. That's against the law punishable.

Matt (17:18.867)
So to me, this is worse than a death threat, right? And so this should be against the law.

Shawn (17:25.388)
worse than a death threat.

Melanie (17:27.368)
100%.

Matt (17:27.623)
Yeah. Taking an image of somebody and turning it into a nude is worse than a death threat.

Shawn (17:33.79)
What if I took an image of you and, I don't know, made you like super heavy or put a scar on your face or made you uglier or made you bald? Does that fall in the same category or is there some line here that you're willing to cross and you're just not willing to cross, you know, explicit sexuality?

Matt (17:53.353)
I think that for me, it's going to be sexually explicit stuff. Other sorts of jokes or making fun of a person's weight or whatever. That's a different realm than sexually explicit content.

Melanie (18:08.53)
And when I think about it, I feel like there are very few things as important as one's own self. And so I think taking an image of someone and making them say something that they didn't say that you know they wouldn't say, I think that's morally wrong. I think that that should be punishable. Maybe not as severely as explicit images. But I think by creating explicit images of someone who did not provide explicit images,

you're ascribing an intent to them that they likely did not mean to convey. And I think that that is morally wrong. And I think it should not be done.

Shawn (18:48.248)
So isn't there a law against that? Like that's kind of defamation, right? So a civil lawsuit, could civilly, like some celebrity who gets these nasty photos, I mean, you don't need AI for it. can even Photoshop. Like there's always been around. And then you have a civil lawsuit and whomever posted it or whoever is allowing it to be posted or promotes it is made to pay big fines. And that's a deterrent, no?

Matt (19:13.929)
Well, so that's what I'm saying is we need to pass laws that hold the social media companies accountable for the content on their platforms. Just like we do newspapers, just like we do what we do with television networks, we do with cable TV, we do with radio stations. So the only way you really fix it.

Shawn (19:22.286)
That's a slippery slope.

Shawn (19:32.056)
But it's a different beast. It's not a newspaper.

Matt (19:34.759)
Look, I'm telling.

Melanie (19:34.844)
But not everyone has to.

I think not everyone has the resources to take their case to court, right? So if you're underprivileged, you don't have the money to enter into a civil lawsuit against someone who posted an explicit image of you, you should not be less entitled to protection than someone with those means. And so the only way to protect everyone equally is to target the software that's making it possible.

Matt (19:54.707)
or

Matt (20:01.773)
Or like Sean, it's some kid in high school, I can sue that kid for everything they have, but they don't have anything. So it doesn't fix the problem. But, but Elon Musk has deep pockets and I tell you, I could get a class action lawsuit against Elon Musk for a billion dollars and this stuff would go away forever. He would not be posting laughing emojis if he knew he was facing a billion dollar lawsuit.

Shawn (20:26.766)
But that's a civil lawsuit, right? So if you can really find that someone was emotionally damaged or physically damaged from all this, or it's defamation, and you can show that

Matt (20:28.797)
Yeah.

Matt (20:35.273)
But he's protected by laws that say Twitter or X cannot be sued for content posted on X. And I'm saying change that law.

Shawn (20:47.8)
All right, so let me give you another, let me give you another scenario. Let's say you're at a public high school and let's say something happens in that public high school that, you know, is something similar, right? Someone takes pictures of someone or does something to someone that is really damaging. Should I be able to also sue the school, right? It was enabled in that school. Really?

Matt (21:05.299)
For sure. For sure. And you should be able to sue teachers that knew about it and didn't do anything to stop it. And you should be able to sue the principal if they knew about it and didn't do anything to stop it. Those laws exist right now that you could sue those people. So I'm just saying, yeah. So I'm just saying hold Elon Musk to the same standard that everybody else in society is being held to.

Shawn (21:20.568)
Really?

Shawn (21:30.85)
What if he came through, okay, what if these platforms have like, I mean, most platforms do, right? Like this has explicit content, this doesn't, you're gonna find shady weird stuff over here. This is safe, you're gonna, you know, like cable TV does that, Netflix does that, right? You're able to filter through and go, I don't wanna take a part in this dark web stuff. I would rather take part in upfront stuff. And it does get policed in that way. Is it then now are they covering themselves? Would that be a better environment?

Now you have to go, look, I don't want to have anything to do. No, you don't think so?

Melanie (22:02.364)
Well, I think, because I think first off, the problem isn't that there's pornography on X. It's that it's pornography of a population that did not agree to have those explicit images produced. And I also think, like, the more you allow it, the more this could be used to target, say, children, which is a horrifying, terrible possibility.

Matt (22:28.295)
Right, it's a crime to have child porn on your computer, right? But it's not clear if it's AI generated or not AI generated. Is it a crime to have AI generated child porn? Because in theory, that's not child porn, right? That's like AI, there's like a gray space there where people could, so if it's wrong to have child porn, then it should be wrong to host and create those sorts of things of adults and non-consenting individuals.

Shawn (22:56.16)
Okay, I think maybe you two have convinced me. I think I'd be good with laws that are protecting the innocent. So I think you've convinced me. Let's pass some laws. Not necessarily let's go and like sue and take down the platform, but let's make strong laws that make it pretty scary for them not to self-police.

Matt (23:15.645)
I'll give points to Melanie on this one because she persuaded me that even I would be sad about having fake nudes of myself put on Twitter. I thought I would like it. Okay. This one I think is going to make Sean a little uncomfortable. So Mitt Romney, who we know Sean loves Mitt Romney, he won't even be sad to say he loves Mitt Romney. He wrote an op ed and then yeah, he wrote an op ed in the New York times with a new proposal that he calls taxing the rich.

Melanie (23:23.868)
Thank you. Thank you.

Shawn (23:37.506)
I love Mitt Romney.

Matt (23:45.033)
to save social security and Medicare from going bankrupt. He's not talking about raising taxes on everyday families. Instead, he's targeting multi-billionaires and mega estates worth over $100 million. Romney argues that the ultra wealthy are using massive loopholes to avoid paying taxes on their investments in real estate deals, money the government desperately needs to prevent a 23 % cut to social security benefits by the year 2034. His message is simple.

To save the system for everybody, it's time to go where the money is and make the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share. The question is, is Mitt Romney's proposal something that members of our church should get behind?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, Sean, you go first this time. He, by the way.

Shawn (24:32.597)
Absolutely not.

Shawn (24:38.894)
Okay, it's okay, look, it's okay for me to, yeah.

Matt (24:42.141)
By the way, I trust Mitt Romney's latter-day lens on this particular topic. I think he knows.

Shawn (24:47.15)
So that was passive aggressive.

Melanie (24:47.26)
More than Sean's?

Matt (24:52.585)
Go ahead, Sean, tell us more.

Shawn (24:55.084)
It's okay to love someone's general, like I love Mitt Romney. think he's done a great job. He's a great man. He's really impressed with him. And it's okay that he's wrong on something. It's okay that I can disagree with certain things. That's okay. And here's the thing. We were offline having a discussion with some friends about healthcare or helping the poor actually.

Here's the thing, when we make everything about money, it's all just about money. We're looking past what the true solutions to things are. Mitt Romney, by delineating, well, a certain dollar amount is qualified to pay more taxes, more than a fair share of taxes versus a line of dollar or money income that will not make you pay that. You're making it about dollars and it's not about that. It's not. It's...

It's the worship of money that makes us so, I guess, missing the spot on this. Solving people's problems, hard work, teaching people to work hard, to be better educated, to build good relationships, to know how to network. These are the things that will help people not need to rely on some government for some food stamps, for example. But I don't like that politicians, they step back and go, okay, how can we as a system

Take away the individuals and the faces and the real people. How can we as a system try and solve something with a swoop, with one big picture? And Mitt Romney's thing is, let's throw money at it. Let's just throw money at it. I think he's wrong.

Matt (26:30.291)
Well, what he's saying is social security and Medicare are systems that you pay into, right? So if you have a job, your employer takes some of your wage and puts it into social security and your employer has to also contribute money to social security. And so the idea is that everybody pays into social security while they're working. And then at the end, when you retire, then there's some retirement money for you from social security. And the problem, there's two problems.

One of the problems is that the federal government has taken money out of that social security pot to spend on other things that they shouldn't have spent money on. The other problem is that social security and Medicare has always been thought of as a plan for poor people. And so the rich people don't have to pay into it. So if you make an income over $174,000 a year, they no longer take money from your paycheck to put it into social security, because you're exempt from that plan.

Or if you're a real estate developer and you don't earn a wage, you never have to pay into social security because you have capital gains as your primary source of income, not the wages that you earn. So if you don't earn a wage or if you earn too much of a wage, you don't pay into the system. Mitt Romney is just saying everybody should have to pay into the social security system. And that's the only way to save the social security system. Does that change the way you think?

Shawn (27:56.792)
But all I'm saying is the big picture is if there's not enough money to take care of the people that are relying on for their retirement, relying on the government's program and system, I think we've got a flawed program there. We need to help each other be self-sufficient. We need to help each other learn how to have the skills and rely on ourselves and on our families and on our churches and religions.

Matt (28:13.8)
Yeah.

Shawn (28:26.658)
The big picture problem there, yeah, he's just looking at the money and going, well, there's not enough money in there to take care of all the demanding poor that are gonna need it. There's a much deeper problem there. Money's not the solution to that.

Matt (28:40.071)
I think Robin Hood was right, Sean. Take from the rich and give to the poor. Was Robin Hood a prophet?

Shawn (28:47.118)
Depends on which Robin Hood you're talking about. The cartoon Fox Robin Hood, would say Prophet. Who's the other dude? The actor? Probably not. Errol Flynn? I don't think he was a prophet. Kevin Costner's not a prophet, but Fox is.

Matt (28:52.23)
You

Matt (28:56.625)
Errol Flynn, Errol Flynn. Kevin Costner? Not a prophet. What do you say Melanie?

Shawn (29:07.51)
Melanie, you grew with your dad, don't you?

Melanie (29:11.634)
think there's something within me that really, really doesn't like the thought of billionaires. And, you know, maybe it's jealousy, maybe it's something else. But I really like the idea of taking all of the money away from billionaires until they are no longer billionaires.

Shawn (29:20.726)
What the heck?

Matt (29:31.081)
How much is the max? Do you define a billionaire by their worth on paper or by how much income they are generating for themselves each year?

Shawn (29:31.798)
What principle drives that?

Melanie (29:34.534)
Hey, I don't know.

Melanie (29:44.124)
I think if you are able to own a private airplane, you have too much money.

Shawn (29:44.8)
No, that's the wrong question to ask. The question to ask is...

Matt (29:50.708)
Melanie (29:54.152)
please don't say anything about my obsession with sailboats.

Matt (29:57.411)
So.

Shawn (29:59.84)
what?

Melanie (30:00.68)
You

Matt (30:03.005)
But there is this, I wonder what you say to this, Sean. Jesus did tell that rich young man to sell everything he had and give it to the poor and then follow Jesus. So I think Sean, somewhere you do believe that rich people.

Shawn (30:17.486)
Did he look?

Matt (30:21.395)
Go ahead.

Shawn (30:21.624)
Then he turned his head to Matt and go, go steal all of the money from that rich man and give it to the poor. Beat him up, put a gun to his face, put him in prison if he doesn't give it up, steal it from him and then give. Is that what Jesus taught?

Matt (30:25.417)
Hahaha

Matt (30:35.985)
Right, so I think you agree with the idea that the rich should give to the poor. You don't like the idea of them being compelled to do so, but you do think that there is a religious principle that rich people should give back.

Shawn (30:53.548)
I'm fine with a fair share. What does it have to do with how much money you have? Stop making it about money. It has nothing to do with whether you're rich or a billionaire or a millionaire. If you're obsessed with sailboats or with private planes, it doesn't matter. Everyone can pay their fair share. I'm fine with living in a society that says, hey, if we all agree mutually that we're gonna put an X amount or a percentage or whatever. And hey, if we're upset with laws that make loopholes, then stop making laws with loopholes. Or let's everyone use the.

Melanie (31:20.722)
We don't have the power to stop making those laws. Well, maybe one day. Maybe one day.

Matt (31:23.709)
Yeah, it's too hard.

Shawn (31:28.812)
You

Matt (31:30.569)
Okay. What if, okay, but I'm going to take your, your analogy, Sean. What if there's a hundred people, right? And 99 of those hundred people say our fair share is that this one person who's got a billion dollars and the rest of us who have $150,000, we vote 99 to one to take his billion dollars and share it with the rest of us. You call that theft, even if it was done through a democratic vote process.

Shawn (31:55.182)
call that social. That's also social democratic socialism.

Melanie (31:57.064)
You

Matt (32:00.169)
Yeah, I can't, cannot get Sean to come around on the idea that we should raise taxes on rich people more than we do on poor people.

Melanie (32:10.728)
Do you think there's a way we could sell him on the rich people do not have money proportional to the amount of work they put in to get that?

Matt (32:20.328)
Hmm.

Shawn (32:21.902)
What the? Why would you claim to even think that? Melanie, what percentage of ultra wealthy in our country were self-made versus inherited? Do know that number?

Melanie (32:35.048)
But I think self-made doesn't necessarily correlate to a perfect amount of work.

Matt (32:39.783)
Yeah, a lot of self-made people just stole it, Sean. That made him self, El Chapo. El Chapo's a self-made billionaire. He sold drugs and killed people.

Melanie (32:43.272)
Okay, now you're mocking me.

Melanie (32:53.064)
I think we give credit to the people who have a good intuition for money and finances, right? Because they're able to play the stock market, they're able to play businesses and make a lot of money and that's where the money is. But I think we don't acknowledge the fact that some people may be more naturally inclined towards menial labor. And for not having the intuition for money and finances, they're penalized to have a lower quality of life for the rest of...

Shawn (33:22.813)
Okay, okay, whether I engage in menial labor and make minimum wage or I am really good at the stock market and have in either situation, the scriptural gospel principle is if you earn this much, spend this much less, spend less than you earn. And if you will do that, there will be money in there to

Melanie (33:26.152)
I'm

Shawn (33:50.456)
for example, put in the stock market and then that will grow. In fact, the Lord gave us many, parables about that, right? Here's a talent. Now, I don't care that if in the end you come back with three million talents, but I do care that you took that talent, treated it wisely and improved it, at least doubled it, right? But that guy received everything the Lord had just as much as the guy who brought back three million talents. It doesn't matter how much talents we have.

no what we do with it.

Melanie (34:22.792)
I want to continue this so bad, Sean, but this wasn't the question and we should probably move on. So can I give you my points? I'll give you my points, Sean.

Shawn (34:28.462)
That's true. Yes. no!

Matt (34:28.744)
Well...

Matt (34:34.521)
I'm giving Sean the points as well because he brought in the latter day lens to, but also I'm going to just say this. I think Mitt Romney is wrong as well. My solution to the problem is not to tax anybody. It's just to print more dollars, print more dollars until the problem goes away because we can print dollars and then it, and then that's totally fair because everybody's dollars are worth the same amount less equally.

And then we have this fair share of nobody's paying more. Nobody's paying less, but everybody has less because we're just printing more dollars and just

Melanie (35:07.534)
motion to get rid of money and go back to barter.

Shawn (35:08.43)
There's no way he believes that.

Shawn (35:12.79)
Now you're talking, I mean, but naturally money is gonna exist from that.

Matt (35:14.279)
Hahaha

Matt (35:18.889)
But you get the point Sean, that was good. Okay, we're gonna move to the big question. I am so excited to talk about this big question. Listeners, you're gonna have to just bear with me as I set this up. And I will say at the beginning of all of this, I took a family vacation to Roswell, New Mexico. We went to the museum where they have all of the evidence from the Roswell UFO crash. Melanie was there with me. So.

Melanie (35:23.208)
You

Matt (35:44.765)
Whatever response she has to this, just have to know she has been exposed to

Melanie (35:49.232)
I need a listener to write in and ask my dad how many times he's told this story.

Shawn (35:56.942)
I've never heard this story.

Matt (35:57.063)
Not this is the first time on the podcast, but I will say Melanie has all kinds of information at her disposal as she answers this question. Okay. So

Melanie (35:58.024)
you

Melanie (36:07.986)
written in Calibri 11.5 font on poster board.

Matt (36:11.197)
Hahaha

Shawn (36:13.814)
ha!

Matt (36:14.569)
Melanie's not a fan of the museum, but listener, go to Roswell, go to the museum and judge for yourself. Don't let her sway your opinion too much. Okay, there's this new movie out on Amazon Prime. It's called The Age of Disclosure. I haven't seen the film, but I read about the film and I'm familiar with the evidence they use in the film. They present testimony from former and current government and military officials who claim that extraterrestrial intelligence exists.

and they show evidence of non-human technology that has been recovered and concealed for decades. While the film offers no publicly verifiable physical proof, argues that the volume, the hosts are already laughing, it argues that the volume and consistency of insider testimony point to the real possibility that intelligent life beyond earth exists and may already be observing humanity. Now, if we go to the scriptures,

Melanie (37:00.136)
you

Matt (37:13.947)
In Moses chapter one verses 31 to 40, God talks about the existence of worlds without number, but he deliberately limits what he reveals to Moses saying, an account of this earth give I unto you. So this passage suggests that God governs not only creation, but also the timing, scope and purpose of revelation that he gives to humans. So if God deliberately withheld knowledge of other worlds,

Shawn (37:29.603)
Yeah?

Matt (37:43.123)
then maybe interaction across worlds, particularly direct visitation would depend more on divine authorization than human ingenuity or technological discovery alone. So here's the big question. Have aliens ever visited planet earth? I'm just going to say this because I've already alluded to this. Yes, of course.

Melanie (38:01.736)
Dumb dumb.

Matt (38:08.135)
And if you need the evidence, go to Roswell, New Mexico, and there's a museum that has all the evidence. Yes, of course. And sometimes human ingenuity surpasses revelation. Sometimes human ingenuity makes it so God is like, my goodness, I didn't want to tell them about that, but they figured it out. And so, okay, I guess wormholes, you can use them to travel intergalactic.

Melanie (38:10.408)
You

Melanie (38:31.064)
my gosh.

Matt (38:33.937)
Okay, now I'll be quiet.

Melanie (38:35.272)
you

Shawn (38:36.782)
Melanie, I want to hear it. I love the faces you've made.

Matt (38:37.715)
Mel- Melanie likes it if she knows physics.

Melanie (38:42.088)
I'm... it's just like since Stranger Things Season 5, you can't say wormhole and not make me die a little bit inside.

Shawn (38:42.829)
Ha

Shawn (38:51.438)
Ha

Matt (38:53.193)
I don't know about exactly about Stranger Things Season 5, but I think it is possible. There could be some upside down world and there's a wormhole that's connecting two worlds there. Something like that is possible, but it's also very likely. I've just seen too much evidence, not physical evidence, you know, chitter chatter to think that the aliens haven't visited planet Earth. Go to the museum in Roswell, New Mexico. You will be persuaded.

Okay, now I'll be quiet.

Shawn (39:22.946)
Wow.

Melanie (39:23.546)
I was definitely persuaded, 100%.

Shawn (39:29.922)
Wait, so I don't know the story or your experience, Melanie. You're being facetious. You're mocking your father. Yeah, tell me about that museum. Was it just a joke?

Melanie (39:34.856)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt (39:36.935)
Well, tell us more, Milla.

Yeah. No!

Melanie (39:42.08)
So firstly, it was a poorly assembled museum. And I think if you're trying to convey information, it should be portrayed in a reputable way. But also a grand majority of their evidence was firsthand accounts collected years after the fact. And when you live in a town of mystery, it's really easy to rewrite memories. You can ask me what happened last week and I wouldn't be able to tell you. I think if you see a colorful cloud in the sky,

Shawn (39:47.095)
Nice, strike one.

Shawn (39:52.686)
Strike one.

Matt (39:59.027)
Some things are unforgettable.

Shawn (39:59.967)
Shawn (40:06.059)
Huh?

Matt (40:08.604)
Okay, pause.

Melanie (40:12.006)
And then the next day your neighbor's like, did you see that cloud? It kind of looked like a spaceship. You'd be like, yeah, it did kind of look like a spaceship and it was glowing a little weirdly. And then it's not that hard a couple of days later to see a weird deer carcass in your field and be like, that doesn't look like a deer. That looks like a person. And it's a little green.

Matt (40:29.321)
Okay, pause, pause. They have dozens of sworn eyewitness statements in the museum. The Roswell event happened in 1946 and the statements were collected in 1996 on the 50th anniversary. So I don't think that it's fair to say that their memories were faded because they saw what they saw and remembered it for 50 years. So it would.

Shawn (40:30.688)
Nice Melanie nice nice Melanie nice

Melanie (40:55.098)
And small towns never do desperate things to get tourists. May I remind you about a certain leg lamp statue in Chickasha, Oklahoma?

Matt (41:07.857)
It's huge. It's huge. Yeah, that's true. What's so sad about Chickasha, just as a tangent, Chickasha, Oklahoma is very excited because they invented the leg lamp that got used in A Christmas Story, the movie. But do you know, in the same place in Chickasha, Oklahoma is where the Tiger King is being kept in jail and they never ever talk about the Tiger King, but it's always about the leg lamp, the leg lamp when they could be talking about the Tiger King.

Melanie (41:08.72)
You

Shawn (41:35.406)
Now, Melanie, when I met your father in 1993 and I thought, dude's a cool dude, really good guy, cool guy, I never thought that he'd become such a freaking nerd.

to be quoting these things that he's quoting. Talking about these interesting, he's become an old guy, these interesting facts. How's the weather, Matt? How's the weather for you right now? Talk about the weather too.

Matt (41:51.516)
You

Melanie (41:55.88)
You

you

Matt (41:59.315)
So Sean, you're saying aliens have never visited planet earth ever, ever.

Shawn (42:05.802)
I, why would I say something that there's, I have no idea. You have no idea. None of you have any idea, but I really enjoy watching Melanie just pick your opinions and experiences apart because she's logical, man. She's logical. But it does, it does spark a question that I would love you two to answer. I was watching on Instagram, there's a guy named Frank Turrett or Turin or something like that.

Matt (42:20.721)
I feel like I'm logical too. So Sean, but the...

Shawn (42:34.434)
big evangelical, very, very famous popular guy. And whenever someone, has these big forums where people can ask him all these questions and every now and an LDS guy gets up there and asks him a good question and they talk about it. And one of the debates that they've sunk into a lot is this idea of witnesses. So the whole, like this whole thing is like, he says, hey, you don't have any witnesses of the Book of Mormon, that it was a miracle or whatever. And the LDS people always come back and say, well, you're talking like an atheist, right? Because there aren't any witnesses to give accounts that Jesus Christ was resurrected, yet you believe in it.

And so that goes back to him saying, well, they go into this whole thing and say there are more witnesses of the Book of Mormon, like firsthand, reliable witnesses of the Book of Mormon who never recanted their witness, than there are for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so they always go to that. And I'm always like, what are you guys arguing about? Where our faith isn't based in the things that we see. I mean, there's some utility, right? Otherwise God wouldn't have commanded these witnesses. But what do you think? Melanie, clearly you're like, Melanie, is your idea that

their witnesses for these aliens are just unreliable because they weren't timely? Or do you think that if these, would you still be singing this song if these witnesses and their testimonies were written down five minutes after they witnessed what they claim to have witnessed?

Melanie (43:50.886)
think if their testimonies were written down five minutes later, I would be more inclined to think that there was something weird going on. But I do think that there are so many things in this world that we do not yet have the power and capacity to explain. And I think ascribing everything to little green men from Mars visiting us in spaceships is a little hasty.

Shawn (43:57.134)
You're welcome.

Matt (44:14.931)
Well, people saw them, Melanie. People saw them. And they saw people doing surgery on them. So.

Melanie (44:21.626)
Remember when I was like five years old and we were driving home from Utah and there was some satellite in the sky that was flashing and I was convinced beyond belief that it was a UFO?

Matt (44:33.585)
Yes?

Melanie (44:34.67)
Yeah, I believed that that was a UFO for like probably at least five years before I was like, yeah, that was just a satellite. And I think that's probably a very common occurrence.

Matt (44:47.847)
Let me ask you Sean this in a different way. Do you believe Sean that human ingenuity can overpower revelation that God could say, I'm not telling you about this earth.

Shawn (44:57.804)
I like that question.

Yeah, I really like that question. And we've talked about that quite a bit. Like we talked about Ozempic, for example. Is Ozempic this abomination that is going to cause lots of problems down the road because it's a drug, it's a chemical that we're putting in our bodies. And we're going to find that there's some danger in there. It certainly isn't helping human beings be disciplined like the temple and the temple garments say about what we put into our bodies, right? Necessarily. But then the other side says, what if this is a God given, like this

this holy and eternal chemical or whatever the drug is that is fixing humans on the one hand or the other. Right? So we've had this discussion quite a bit. I tend to think that, I have a little more faith in the fact that God is in charge. He is controlling what we have, what we know. And I don't think that mankind has the ability to surpass that. No, I don't think so.

Matt (45:55.593)
Well, what about the idea that he might say, Moses, you're not ready for this. So I'm not going to tell you all this now, but someday in the future, Neil Armstrong is going to set his foot on the moon and that's going to lead to more discovery that I can inspire later on. And then maybe people will discover other people and other planets.

Shawn (46:15.454)
But that's a different question. You're asking if God is waiting to reveal things at the right time versus can man access things beyond what God allows to be accessed? What's the question? Which one of those is the question?

Matt (46:24.476)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt (46:28.689)
Yeah. No, they are different questions. I just think that just, I just think the fact that God says, I'm not going to tell you about the, this earth doesn't preclude the possibility that people out there or beings out there or people on other planets have figured out how to travel. And I personally think that these, these, spaceships that we've, that we've got evidence of are, humans.

we're able to travel to other places. think aliens have come here and we've gone to other planets.

Shawn (47:01.23)
So is this theory 100 % based on the evidence you saw at Roswell Museum?

Melanie (47:04.358)
Wait, what?

Matt (47:12.817)
No, no, there's been congressional testimony about these, these spacecraft. We don't know what to call them. We call them unidentified aerial something. I don't know what they're called, but they can travel 10,000 miles an hour and they can stop on a diamond shift directions. They violate all known laws of physics and we've got them. We've got evidence of them on like pilots have recorded it like naval ships have recorded it.

They can go down in the water deeper than submarines can go in the water. so yeah, there's this technology that we've been recording.

Shawn (47:46.282)
And you're saying that there's government public records of all of that.

Matt (47:51.741)
Yeah, and the official word is we don't know what it is, but I do. I know what it is. It's aliens and it's us.

Melanie (47:59.292)
Here's my question for you, Do you think it's more likely that these are human beings from other planets or that people from our future have figured out how to travel back in time?

Matt (48:10.705)
No, time travel is impossible. I don't have time to teach physics to everybody. Time travel is not possible, but interplanetary travel is possible.

Melanie (48:17.83)
So time travel is not possible, but spaceships that violate all known laws of physics are.

Matt (48:22.941)
Yeah, that's right.

Shawn (48:27.224)
Melody, I love that the audience is getting a glimpse of what it's like to be in a household with your father growing up.

Melanie (48:33.256)
I wasn't always this good at it.

Shawn (48:35.138)
I mean, I got a little bit of it on the mission. Yeah, you're killing it.

Matt (48:37.963)
haha

Hey listeners, need your, I need your help on this one. It would be so helpful to me if you could write into the show, Melanie, because she's getting a degree in physics feels like she knows more about the subject than I do, but I feel like she's wrong about a lot of these laws of physics. And so it'd be helpful if you could just like write in and let me know that I'm right about this. It's fine if you guys agree with Melanie and Sean too, but sometimes you just know deep in your soul that you're right about something.

And this is one of those like as long as long as I've been alive, I've known that there were extraterrestrials that have visited our planet. X-files spoke to me.

Shawn (49:11.157)
What? What the?

Shawn (49:18.382)
Okay, hang on. Okay.

What did you did you answer Melanie's question? Are they human beings on the planets? Are they different species?

Matt (49:32.179)
Have you seen the movie Fire in the Sky? Possible.

Shawn (49:34.664)
answer the question. Yeah, I have seen that. Yeah.

Matt (49:38.057)
Okay, that's that guy was a member of our church who was abducted by aliens. And his story is that is that those big green eye things, those big black eyes, those are helmets. So it's people in helmets. They're just short people. They're humans that have visited our planet, but we've also visited their planet. Based on, I mean, look.

Shawn (49:58.67)
All right, so this is where.

audience this is where Matt crosses the line and starts to love to be poking people he loves to poke people do you Matt sincerely believe but sincerely the human beings from other planets have come here and for whatever reason they put a their fashion the fashion that they're into is meant to look like green frog people is that what you're saying

Melanie (50:10.53)
Yeah.

Matt (50:19.731)
haha

Matt (50:25.661)
No, that's just, no, I'm just saying that's the spacesuits that they wear, right? Like an astronaut would look really weird. and another, right? I don't think that we shouldn't think humans have like big glass reflective faces because that's the helmet that they were.

Shawn (50:37.9)
What evidence do you have that they're human beings with frog spacesuits on?

Matt (50:44.691)
Fire in the sky. Fire in the sky and he's a member of our church who was abducted. Yeah!

Shawn (50:47.694)
The movie.

Melanie (50:49.336)
So listener, I will point out that My Father's Evidence is a science fiction film.

Matt (50:54.697)
No, it's not. It's not sci-fi. It's I forget the guy's name, but he's a member of our church. He was out like cutting down trees in Arizona and he got abducted by aliens and he wrote his story about being a

Shawn (50:56.216)
Yeah, Wow.

Shawn (51:07.086)
Do you believe his witness? You believe his witness because he's a member of the church?

Matt (51:11.657)
it, it adds to his credibility in my opinion. Yeah. I mean, this is the latter day lens. So I'm trying to bring in like, okay, I'm not convincing Sean or Melanie, but that was an awesome way to end the podcast. Hey listeners, thanks for joining us this week. Thanks for sticking through this discussion about the big question and extraterrestrial life. Can't wait to hear what you guys have to say about that. Talk to you again next week.

Shawn (51:19.554)
Was the admission president? Was the admission president?

Melanie (51:21.212)
Hehehehehe