The Fight Against Worldwide Child Slavery & the Sex Trade | Jim Caviezel and Tim Ballard | EP 372

This is the best interview I've ever had in my life. I love your line of questioning and, um, getting to what is real. I hooked into Tim; he has a childlike quality to him, and I stay with that innocence and that—and don’t take that innocence's weakness or, uh. When I read the scripture, I feel truth, good, evil, and I find the good and let that just pierce the darkness.

Hello everyone watching and listening. Today I have the pleasure of speaking to two people: someone you most likely know for his portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth in Passion of the Christ, Jim Caviezel, and also someone you should know if you don't already, the man behind Operation Underground Railroad, Tim Ballard.

We discussed the new film The Sound of Freedom, wherein Mr. Caviezel plays Tim Ballard in the telling of his real-life story detailing his fight against the increasingly worldwide and pervasive childhood sex trade. The film The Sound of Freedom releases on July 4th.

So, about a week and a half ago, I got a text message from Tony Robbins, suggesting that I watch a new film called The Sound of Freedom, and I did that about four days ago with my wife Tammy and was quite struck by the movie. I decided to follow up on it. It details out the efforts of one man, Tim Ballard, to investigate, uh, the child sexual slave ring and to rescue the children that were associated with that.

But it also points to a broader social problem, which is the spread of sexual and slave trafficking worldwide, abetted by the net, which is a great avenue for psychopathic criminals to pursue their darkest desires with very little risk of being caught, especially on a multinational basis. So I've decided to reach out to Tim Ballard, who is the, um, the man whom the movie is about, and to Jim Caviezel, who's the actor that plays him, to talk about what all this signifies.

So Tim, let's start with you. I mean, the movie makes the case that there is a widely expanding network of slavery essentially making itself manifest worldwide, concentrating in no small part on very young children who are being sold repeatedly to pedophilic psychopaths to have at their will, and of course can be sold repeatedly for that purpose. The movie makes the case that this is now an operation that's rivaling the drug trade in magnitude.

So, you know, it sounds like yet another right-wing conspiracy. So please, why don't you walk us through what you know and help me understand, and everybody watching and listening exactly what you think is going on?

Yeah, thank you so much, uh, Jordan. We're so grateful, uh, you take your time to do this with us. So I spent 12 years as a special agent undercover operator with the Department of Homeland Security. Most of my time, 90% of that time was spent investigating these cases: child crimes, child trafficking. And in fact, those numbers are correct.

These are Department of Labor, U.N.—these are sources that, um, you know, the best we have that say that there's close to six million children or more who are forced into sex slavery, labor slavery, or organ harvesting. And I can attest that I have been involved in cases involving all three of those forms of slavery multiple times, and it absolutely is a real thing.

Um, it's not even far from home. The United States is the number one consumer year after year of child rate material, and oftentimes we're close to number one in production. Um, and it's a serious matter. You know the case—the story and The Sound of Freedom kicks off with the rescue of a little boy at the Port of Entry, uh, the southern border. That's a real story, a real boy, um, that I—I was on that port of entry. I was 10 years on the southern border.

So when you have 85,000 unaccompanied minors showing up in the last two years, being let into the country without the sponsor being vetted, DNA checked, and background checked, um, you know, I called the economy of pedophilia in the United States, where the demand—85,000 children, thousands of them are under five years old—are led into the country. So we have a serious, serious problem, and, uh, it's not being addressed as it should be. Hopefully, this film can do that.

Have—what has been your experience with regard to so-called mainstream media or legacy media coverage? How much attention has been paid to this? If not much, why? If reasonably, who and how?

Well, I think not very much has been, uh, you know, attention has been given by mainstream media. Oftentimes, it's more innocent than cynical, perhaps, where it's just this is too dark; I don't want to expose our audience to this horrific thing. Um, you know, I—I film, we film our operations. I mean, I’m going to post today another operation in West Africa of a baby factory.

I mean, these are real cases where they've kidnapped women, um, as young as 13 years old and children, and they impregnate them, they rape them, and they make babies. They take these babies and sell them for their organs, sell them for sex, sell them for Satanic ritual abuse. Like, it's—it does sound crazy. That's why I film it. Our operations—we film our operations so that we can show the world this is very real; it's really happening.

Um, and I think if there are two million children forced into commercial sex, which is this the most, uh, kind of credible statistic that we can find, a lot of people are involved. So there is a more cynical answer to your question, which may be there's people that don't want this exposed because they're involved in it.

So I'm going to harass you a bit here. Um, from the Wikipedia page, um, there are some—not that I'm particularly a fan of Wikipedia pages, uh, depending on the circumstances—but there are some criticisms of what you're doing, and I thought we might as well, um, address them right off the bat, because people who are watching are going to be looking, man, if I was coming across this for the first time—and in some ways I am—I've got two choices in front of me, don't I? I can either presume that you've discovered something that's ongoing and of tremendous significance—that's terribly dark—or I can assume that the difficult work that you had done for a decade, um, genuinely addressing these problems has made you hypersensitive to a threat and willing to magnify it. And it would be easier just to ignore you as a consequence.

Now that would be the preferable, um, outcome to such an investigation, wouldn't it? So you can, as—as you said, you can understand why people might want to avert their eyes from such a thing. So I'm going to walk through these criticisms, and maybe you could, you know, you can respond to them, and we can get that out of the way before we go deeper into the film and, and your, your, uh, your operations.

So your group—and this is Operation Underground Railroad—and tell me if I get anything wrong here—says it devours conspiracy theories, though founder Tom Ballard was criticized for refusing to condemn the Q Anon conspiracy theory. Um, I have no idea what the hell that means. Do you know what that's referring to?

Yeah, absolutely. We—that's—that's a lie in Wikipedia. We have absolutely an FAQ—our FAQs for years have condemned the majority of what we see, um, with conspiracy theories. Uh, so I—they like to attribute me to the Q Anon movement. Um, there may be some truths in there, but there's so many falsehoods on top of that, so our FAQs refute that immediately, um, because it can discredit the movement.

In fact, I would go so far as to consider that maybe certain people who don’t want this known are responsible for some of the conspiracy theories in order to discredit the movement. Um, and, uh, they go too far—they go too far in their assessment of things. But yeah, we absolutely have just disavowed, uh, what's generally coming out of Q Anon.

Yeah, well, it says, you know, it's very vague on Wikipedia; it says to condemn the Q Anon conspiracy theory. Well, I know perfectly well that there are more than one conspiracy theories, let's say, on Q and on, so I'm not even exactly sure what it's referring to. What is there a particular conspiracy theory that, um, you were criticized for refusing to condemn? Do you have any more specific details about that?

I mean, I—I’m not sure what exactly they're talking about. Pro—they might be, uh, referring to the fact that there's something called adrenal chrome, where they're taking children's blood and devouring it and so forth. Uh, and I've explained my experience with that, and I just did in West Africa; in other places, we've seen this in several parts of the continent of Africa, and it's very real. It's very real! This witch doctory—they take these children; we—they take their organs; they take their blood—they drink it; they take the genitalia of children and hang it over the rooftop of their businesses, thinking that the dark gods will bless them.

These are real things. Um, and so I might say something like that, and then they connect it to something, uh, that a Q Anon person says about, you know, a celebrity who must be doing this too, but there's no evidence to back that, and they make a false connection there. Um, and—and so that's—that's the only example I can think of.

Okay, got it. Well, the next thing it says is that the Operation Underground Railroad falsely claimed that it had entered a partnership with American Airlines that was in 2022. So what do you have to say about that?

Oh, there's a great one. So a PR firm, uh, who represented, um, us made a deal with American Airlines, uh, came to us and said shoot the video; they're going to put this video on your—we're going to put their for this video on the airlines. They shot the video of me. I just get a call from our PR company to put me in a studio. I give a video that I think I'm talking to the passengers for one month, uh, on American Airlines.

Apparently, the deal fell through. The PR company didn't tell us that, and our marketing company—our marketing team put out, “Hey, we’re going to be on American Airlines.” The PR company apologized—we had fired them—they said, “We can't believe we didn't get the message to you,” and that was it. And, of course, there's people that want so badly for us to be wrong— or us to not do what we say we do, so they exploited that. I think that was Vice magazine—very incredibly dishonest, uh, journalist—uh, I can't call him journalist, uh.

The Vice magazine did—they've done a series of hit pieces on this, and I encourage people—I encourage people to read it—read Vice, read Vice, because everything they say is so ridiculous and so dishonest.

Right, right. Yes, well, and I believe, if I remember correctly, the Vice has also declared bankruptcy in the last few weeks, and I can't imagine an organization more richly deserving. There was a 2021 follow-up article from Vice, but I don't think we're going to—I’ll just read part of it because it’s so ridiculous, conflating consensual sex work with sex trafficking.

Yeah, well, that's exactly the kind of Weasley, um, what would you call it, criticism that I'd expect from people who were trying to justify the sorts of behaviors that you are attempting to expose. Um, then there's a 2021 article in Slate criticizing a 2014 raid conducted by Operation Underground Railroad in the Dominican Republic, saying that it was likely to have traumatized the traffic children. Ann Gallagher, an authority on human trafficking, wrote in 2015 that OUR had an alarming lack of understanding about how sophisticated criminal trafficking networks must be approached and dismantled and called the work of OUR arrogant, unethical, and illegal.

So…how do you weigh that?

Oh, thank you! I'm grateful for this opportunity. So someone like Ann Gallagher, who lives 3,000 miles away from any operation we've ever done, is not qualified to talk about what our operations—she can't give any, uh, details; she can't give any examples. Um, the Slate article is a fun one to address. I've addressed it several times. Um, we, um, early on, we brought a blogger down to do—to—from to watch our operations. We—we invite people down.

If Tony Robbins has been down, um, we invite politicians. The Attorney General of Utah's coming to our operations. Um, if we're hiding something—that’s the last thing we would, of course, do. So we bring this journalist, this blogger—I won't call her a journalist—um, and we thought she was a friend, and she came and watched a legitimate operation happen in the Dominican Republic.

There were seven traffickers who showed up—seven traffickers arrested. There were, um, twenty-plus people rescued—nine of them were children. You can't—you can't sometimes you can't always, uh, control who shows up to the sting party. The traffickers bring who they will. But nine children showed up; they were all liberated from the, um, you know, the control of their captors.

Um, this blogger then wrote two glowing stories about it—that she witnessed this—she had very minimal exposure to the operation itself. She—she witnessed it. Some seven years later, she decides to use it, in my opinion, to somehow increase her social media following as our foundation grew, and she writes a story that's in Slate.

Now here’s the key thing: um, nine children rescued and nine children had three years of aftercare services in this operation provided by International Justice Mission, one of the top authorities in aftercare and fighting human trafficking. Um, seven traffickers were not only arrested, but all seven were convicted. So she chose the wrong case to criticize. Now, tellingly, if anyone's gonna write a story about that operation, good, bad, or otherwise, and they leave out the part that says seven traffickers were arrested and seven traffickers were convicted and nine children were liberated and had three years of aftercare to heal them, if you leave that part out, either you are extremely incompetent as a researcher and writer or you're a liar.

Either way, the story has zero credibility on that fact alone that you—because she doesn’t even report on those two essential elements.

All right, well we've hypothetically dispensed with Vice, which of course is a…

Yeah, well it’s pretty funny that that’s what they named their organization as far as I'm concerned. And we’ll leave the Slate issue aside. Jim, let me ask you a couple of questions if you don’t mind. Do you want to first of all tell people, um, about your involvement with Angel Studios, a little bit about your career, and why this particular movie, Sound of Freedom, it’s—it’s opening, what, in early July? Is it July? When does it come out?

It comes out, uh, July 4th week, so next week. Next week, it’s—it's out in theaters, uh, nationwide.

So, let me turn to Jim. Jim, can you hear me?

Yes, yes.

All right, so yeah, do you want to detail out your association with Angel Studios? Tell everybody first who Angel Studios are, what they've done. And I’ve watched a lot of The Chosen, by the way, which I thought was extremely high quality. Um, do you tell us about the studio? Tell us about your involvement with them, about your career, and then about your attraction to this particular movie.

Well, let's start with the movie first. Um, I have three adopted children from China. I became aware of the dangers that go on, um, with children around the world. And through that process, um, then I became aware of Tim Ballard. Coincidentally, then my friend Eduardo Verástegui brought me this script because many of the actors that they had offered it to didn't want to get involved in this particular project.

I read the script; I love the movie Taken, and I thought this is like Taken but with a much bigger heart. Then Tim Ballard came to the meeting; he had seen two films that I did; one was called The Count of Monte Cristo and then the other one was The Passion of the Christ, and he felt that I'd be the right guy to play him.

Angel Studios—I had nothing, no connection to them until a few months ago when they wanted to do this movie, and they wanted—their idea was to sell 2 million tickets for these two million trafficked children.

So why is it that a number of actors…why, in your estimation, did a number of actors turn down the opportunity to play the role, and—and why did you decide to forego that risk and to climb aboard?

I foregoed the risk because when you have, uh, three children that you love—when you'd give your life for it—kind of connects into Tim Ballard, and Tim did this for this little girl and the children that he saves. It's something, uh, a greater purpose that even your career. Uh, you know, like, I went through this with Mel Gibson when we did The Passion—that my career was the last thing I thought of. What I thought about was the God I love, and I put this in.

How I look at it is, is that this God that I love—he loves me and he deserves to be loved back. And so I—I would be nothing without him; he gave me my purpose in this life. Um, the Tim Ballard—I was very fortunate that he had seen those, um, films, and when I looked at—and I think Tim made this comparison—Schindler's List was a very powerful weapon, but it came 50 years too late. This film is now—this is exposing it now during that time, and I believe that is probably why it's easier to get an actor to do a movie 50 years later; there's no controversy, it's over, but the…the individuals—imagine if Rwanda, if that story had been made, that movie had been made during that time, or that they could see it.

You know, you—you have to look at these situations and understand that, um, good people sit back and do nothing and allow this evil to occur. There's got to be people that stand up in the time that it occurs, and that's what drew me to the whole story in the first place.

And do you—how do you feel about the movie now? You've seen the movie in its entirety. It's about to be released; uh, it's a fully fledged, high quality production. I was particularly impressed by the cinematography. Um, it’s also extraordinarily well-edited. The acting, um—I don’t want to flatter you—but the acting is extremely high quality; it's a very realistic movie.

Um, how do you feel about your involvement now that everything is done? And, and, how do you feel about the—what would you say? The production capacity of Angel Studios, which is a relatively, you know, it's a relatively new—a relative newcomer on the mass entertainment block.

When I was sitting next to Tim Ballard and he leaned over and he started to weep heavily, I knew I did my job.

So, do you want to run us briefly through—I don’t want to give away the entire plot because that would obviously be pointless—but do you want to just run this briefly through, Jim? The plot of the movie, and then I’ll turn to Tim and fill in some of the background details of his life.

So I play Tim Ballard; he's a Homeland Security—he sets up these, um, sting operations to take down these very, very bad men to save trafficked children. In one particular case, one of the traffickers that he takes down, Ursulchinski, uh, he rescues this boy, and the little boy turns to him and says, “Will you save my sister?” And Tim goes back, gets the direction from above and from his wife, and goes back and he sells everything to find this little girl.

So what I liked about the script is I've noticed that one of the most effective ways of communicating complex ideas effectively is to particularize the problem, and so what happens in this movie is that the broad problem of sexual, of slavery and human trafficking and the somewhat narrower problem of sexual trafficking of children is zeroed—uh, is focused on a particular case.

And so that gives the movie a very powerful narrative underpinning, right? Because when our problem is particularized and you can see how it affects actual specific people's lives, it becomes much more realistic and much more palpable. And I thought the movie did a good job of that.

Tim, do you want to walk everybody listening through—let's go back into the details of your life. Now you worked for this—you worked for the special forces per se, and who—who are you working for before you decided to forego your career and to pursue this, the case that we're describing?

So I worked for 12 years as a special agent and undercover operator for the Department of Homeland Security, the investigative division called Homeland Security Investigations. Ten of those years were spent on the border, uh, tracking child traffickers, people who would exploit children with child exploitation material.

So I really learned a lot. In 2006, the laws changed in the United States, and for the first time, U.S. agents were permitted and encouraged to go overseas and find children who Americans were abusing, and we could now hold those Americans accountable as if they had committed that crime on U.S. soil. That's—that’s what really changed my life because I started—I speak Spanish fluently, and they sent me overseas, South of the Border.

That's when my eyes opened up, and I started seeing the children that I used to only see mostly on the—we call it the pornography, on the child expectation material cases. But it was tormenting me. Uh, the U.S. government unwittingly was—because if I couldn't find that connection back to the United States, the American kid or the American pedophile, I had to come home, but the problem is, I've already been exposed to the children, I've already been exposed to the problem.

And oftentimes I've made myself a debate, and in 2012, I had enough on this case. I kind of went more—I went further than otherwise I probably should have. The movie didn't have time to tell you that there was another case in Haiti at the same time that I was working, uh, thinking there was a U.S. nexus, and I was told in both instances to come home, and you couldn't work these cases.

And that's when I had a very consequential conversation with my wife and I said, “If I stay here, if I do this operation with or without my badge, it doesn't matter at this point, I—I can do the work; we will save kids.” Um, and, um, but I—I have to lose my job, and we have six children, and this is—a moral dilemma like I've never faced in my life.

And I was hoping my wife would have responded with, “Get your ass home! You can't—you can't abandon us! You know, first of all, you're gonna die without the top cover of the U.S. government if you continue this, and who's going to pay the bills and feed the—the kids?” She didn't say that. She said to me, “You have to quit your job.” It was that easy for her.

Um, it became spiritual for her even. She felt a calling and a responsibility that she might have to reckon with one day when she meets her maker. And I knew that she felt that way when she told me this in the crucial moment of decision about two days before I ended up turning my badge and gun over and went private. She said to me, “I will not let you jeopardize my salvation by not doing this.” And when she said those words, and I knew she meant those words, that changed everything for me, and we jumped into really just an irrational act of service, I might call it, because it wasn't rational in many, in many ways.

But ultimately, it ended in the operation depicted in the film, which shows 54 children—some, uh, some adult, young adult women were in that group as well—rescued on that island. But what the movie doesn't, uh, have the time to report is that in actuality it was 120. Um, there were two other locations being taken down at the same time, and there's a documentary that's going to follow—in the wake of Sound of Freedom called Triple Take. Angel Studios will put it out, uh, documenting the entire story.

And so in the end, it was successful, and we were able to build upon that success, and I founded Operation Underground Railroad. I run another foundation that was founded by Glenn Beck called the Nazarene Fund, and we're doing these kinds of operations all over the world today.

So how—let's go back in time to before you worked as a security agent for the homeland—an agent for the Homeland Security Investigations unit. How did you—how were you trained to do that? Like, what was your background before you became employed as an agent, and what was it about you that made you capable of engaging in this sort of operation?

So I—I got a graduate degree in, um, international politics and I always wanted to be in federal law enforcement. My first job was the CIA. I was there doing 9/11, um, working in the operations center in the wake of 9/11. I found out that I studied terrorism and weapons of mass destruction; that was the—the actual degree I got at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Um, and so, um, it was an easy recruit into the CIA because, you know, 9/11 had just happened when I found out that one of the terrorists, Muhammad Atta, had staged his attack from Mexicali, Mexico, across the border. And I speak Spanish; I wanted to go fight terrorism on the southern border. So I ended up jumping on the ship from CIA and I joined the newly created Homeland Security Department and became a special agent for six months. I was tracking those kinds of movements, uh, you know—not human trafficking or child exploitation, but money, guns, terrorism.

Six months into that endeavor, I was called into the office of a supervisor, and they asked me if I would please forgo everything that I wanted to do with my career and help them start a child crimes unit. I do not know why they asked me; uh, one thing he did say to me was, “You're a young agent, but you're a person of faith, and we know that about you, and that’s—that's a requirement or your—your soul will be crushed.”

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I would like you, if you would, to tell us to the degree that you can what you were typically dealing with when you started—when you started working for the child sex crimes unit. Let us know what you saw; let us know what that did to you because that sort of thing, that changes people's conceptions of humanity, per se, let's say the nature of the cosmos and what it means to be human, right?

I mean, when you're in contact with people who are capable of that level of darkness, you start to understand something about the nature of the human soul that you can't understand any other way, and that can be a—I mean, that's the sort of thing that gives people post-traumatic stress disorder when they're soldiers.

So—and now you said also your supervisors had an inkling that you might be protected against that, at least to some degree, because of your faith. So let’s walk through what you learned and encountered first. What did you see when you were working as part of this child sex crimes unit?

What I saw was so shocking, Jordan. Uh, I thought child sex crimes would be 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds. Uh, my brain couldn't comprehend something more evil than abusing that age. The very first case I worked in 2002, I believe, I was given a bunch of VHS videos, some hard drives to look at that had been seized in a warrant. The very first image I saw, um, were, um, there were three—three little boys that were probably seven, five, and three, and they looked—they looked like my children. They had, you know, they had blonde hair, blue eyes, and they were being just raped, raped, these three little boys by this pedophile.

And I was so shocked, I fell to my knees; I dry heaved thinking I was going to throw up into the wastebasket. I jumped into my car; I drove to my children's school—my three oldest kids. I checked them out; I still remember in my mind I can still see dentist appointment. I wrote, and I grabbed them; I took them home and just sobbed on the floor. My wife came in, and I just—I wouldn't let the kids go, just holding them, shaking. Um, that was my very first experience.

Uh, you talked about PTSD; I absolutely deal with PTSD to this day. Um, I—I took too long to actually deal with it, uh, that's another story. Um, and I thought, I can't—I can't do this; I can't do this. Um, I started getting help immediately because I didn't want to quit, and, uh, that—that's—that's what this is. That's what this is, and those kinds of videos have increased over the last couple of years by five thousand percent.

Yeah, well, in Canada, um, we just had a report from an organization called the Western Standard that one million child sexual exploitation photos and videos have been identified in an Alberta child porn investigation—one million photos! Eight arrests were made. Okay, so that's some indication of the widespread nature of the problem.

Now you said that when you first encountered this material, it made you physically ill and also terrified for the safety of your children. But then also, it necessitated you seeking, um, health, I suppose, or aid. I mean, I've worked with people who've had post-traumatic stress disorder; generally, what happens is that tragedy is not enough to give someone post-traumatic stress disorder, even if it's rather severe. It has to be a combination of tragedy and malevolence, and the real trauma comes as a consequence of contact with evil, with malevolence.

And what people generally have to do in order to recover from that is to develop a rather profound philosophy of evil. And, you know, a religious faith, in its most fundamental essence, is a philosophy of good and evil. It details out the heart of darkness among human beings. Point out to people, this is particularly—although not uniquely true of the Christian tradition—but particularly true that that capacity for evil lurks in the heart of everyone, and that our fundamental moral obligation as we soldier on here on Earth is to overcome that proclivity within and also to stand up against it in the external world.

And so you said you received some aid after you had been exposed to this first set of videos. Um, what is it about the way you looked at the world that had to change in order for you to adapt to what you were encountering?

Well, I had to come to grips with the—the idea that I had never been confronted with before that there are people, and not a few, but millions of people—only millions of pedophiles could justify a demand of millions of child exploitation, uh, material, videos, and so forth. Uh, the first person you see arrested in the movie is a real person named Ursulchinski in Sound of Freedom; he had over 2 million pieces of child rape material in his house.

So, um, to be confronted with the reality that there are people on this planet—and like I said, not a few, but millions—who want to indulge in watching five-year-old children be raped and sexually assaulted in ways that—and I'm sorry to be so raw, but I feel comfortable with you, Dr. Peterson—but, uh, to—to watch children's bodies actually break in the act of sexual assault; acts that your mind couldn't conjure up if you tried to conjure it up, and that it's real. That is so shocking to the system.

Um, it changes your life forever. I—I tell people I feel like I've had a million holes burned into my brain because I've watched thousands of hours of that kind of material—not only— not only watched it, and I love the scene that Jim depicts where he's—it's—that's very real. I break—I can't watch—I can't watch the movie. But the movie's very good!

The movie doesn't show any of this, by the way. I don't want people to run away and be scared. But you see the scene where the—the camera flashes, um, a close-up into Jim's eyes, and that's—that was me for—for ten years, not only watching, but writing it in details for the court to see, for the prosecutors to see and raising children at the same time that are the very same age. And fortunately, or unfortunately for me, I have now—I have nine children. That at the time I—I left the government I had six.

And so I can always identify the age of a child with one of my own children, and my mind was almost automatically doing—is I would superimpose my own children's faces and persons onto these children, and that's that led to, um, that led to the PTSD, I'll be honest.

Um, and almost a paranoia about what would happen to my children and watching my children, and I've come a long ways, and I'm—I’m able to deal with it, but I—I was determined never to quit, and so I just sought more help, and I won’t quit.

So, okay, Tim. I'm going to walk you through what I know about how people turn into the sort of pedophile that you find—so you, and everyone else, I suppose—or virtually everyone else finds so mysterious.

So I'm going to refer first to the story of Cain and Abel because it actually puts its finger on the process in a stunning manner. So what happens in that story is that two different pathways to adaptation are detailed out, and they become the cardinal pathways of adaptation that characterize the whole human race, immersed as it is from that point onward in history.

Instead of in the Garden of Eden, one is the pathway of Cain, and the other is the pathway of Abel. Now, Abel makes high-quality sacrifices; he's all in, right? He puts himself on the line, and he does the real thing. And as a consequence, God finds—God finds favor with God, and His sacrifices are rewarded; he does well, and everyone loves him, and he thrives.

And Cain, his sacrifices are not of the same quality; he tries to cut the corners and to pull the wool over his eyes and God’s eyes and everyone else's eyes. And as a consequence, his sacrifices are rejected, and instead of clueing the hell in and waking up and taking responsibility for his failure, he decides that he’s going to call out God for creating a cosmos that’s cosmically unfair and unjust, and the evidence for that is Cain's failure and Abel's success.

And so he has a little chat with God and he basically calls him out and says, you know, I’m breaking myself in half here and nothing’s going my way, and Abel gets everything he wants and, you know, how dare you make a cosmos so radically unjust and improper, and why don’t you just straighten yourself out? And God says if you did well you would be rewarded for it and you should look to yourself, and then he says something even worse, and this is very subtle because, um, it's complicated to understand it unless you look at multiple translations or potentially the original Hebrew, which I can't read, but I read the multiple translations.

God says to Cain, “The spirit of sin crouches at your doorstep like a sexually aroused predatory animal, and you have invited it in to have its way with you.” And so now if you study the development of the fantasies of very, very dark people, you see that they brewed and fantasized in isolation for years, and the fantasies get darker and darker and darker. So they're bitter and resentful to begin with, and then they start fantasizing about, well, what they would want, that can take a sexual end, or it can take a very violent, and/or it can take both, and what they're really after is the ultimate in revenge.

And on the sexual front, they find a kick in extending the—what would you call it—unacceptability of the fantasy one stage at a time. Um, the—the famous and extremely attractive sexual serial killer, what was his name? He’s a famous photograph of him, like this very attractive man. Do you remember his…?

Ted Bundy.

Ted Bundy detailed out exactly how his fantasies progressed as he became more and more involved with pornography. And what happens in some sense, is that these people who are nursing these terrible fantasies want to stay on the edge of novelty, and so their fantasies get darker and darker and darker as they progress down that road, and so after a thousand such micro-progressions, they end up in exactly the sort of pit that you're describing.

And some of that is pure sexual kick because of the novelty, and but it's got this sadistic and perverse, uh, vengeful twist. And you could think about it this way—you know, I think it says in the Gospels that, you know, it would be better that that a most millstone was hung around your neck and that you were cast into the abyss than to do harm to any of God's children, let's say.

And that's actually where the perverse delight comes because the most egregious possible sin, let's say, is the violent sexual abuse of the most innocent possible person, and the perverse novelty kick is highest at exactly that point, and then that just goes from bad to worse, and there's a thousand or even ten thousand micro-decisions that go along with that.

There's also a great book called Ordinary Men that is well worth reading, although it's a bloody catastrophe to read, I'll tell you. It details out how a group of German policemen who were moved to Poland during World War II were transformed from ordinary middle-class working class—or, sorry, ordinary working class men, um, old enough to not have been raised under the Nazi regime, by the way, and so not propagandized into a kind of mindless obedience, how they went from being perfectly ordinary policemen to the sort of people who could take naked pregnant women out into the middle of the field and shoot them in the back of the head.

And it isn’t like they had an easy time with that. Some of them reported the same sort of thing that you reported when you first watched that video. They would—they what they were being called upon to do was staged by staged made them physically ill. And they had a commander who actually told them that they could leave the service if they didn't want to continue with their duties, but they felt duty-bound not to leave their comrades having to mop up the terrible situation. But it does a lovely job of detailing out how your movement from normality to absolute perversity is a consequence of ten thousand micro- um, what would you say? Micro violations of your own conscience—not all of the micro, obviously.

So, you know, you need to know about the vengefulness; you need to know about the kick of sadism that that novelty kick that produces a dopaminergic kick that heightens sexual satisfaction. And so there’s an element of sadistic misery that can add novelty to sex that’s particularly attractive to people who are bitter and resentful, because they actually can't find any willing sexual partners and so they're angry at the world and shake their fist at God because of it.

And so, anyways, that’s a bit of the developmental course of such of such a lovely descent into hell. And, um, the interesting thing about it is that people brew that like; you don’t get to the point where you’re watching pornographic videos of children being raped without hundreds or even thousands of hours of increasingly demented voluntary fantasy.

And that’s that allowing the spirit of sin that would otherwise crouch on your doorstep to enter your house and have its way with you, right? It's like a collaborative venture with Satan himself; that's the most straightforward way of describing it.

And so, well, so that's—I don't know what you have to say about that, but I’ll let you have at her.

I'll say this: that everything you're saying absolutely resonates with my anecdotal experiences dealing with these people. I look into their eyes, and what you're describing is what I see, though I've never been able to articulate it like you just have, so I appreciate being armed with, um, with an understanding that it will help me, uh, evangelize more clearly to others about the dangers of over-stimulation and overview support of pornography and shaking hands with the devil. So thank you for that; that was very insightful.

So I spent a bit of time—not a lot, but a bit of time inside a maximum-security prison when I was a kid. I worked with a very strange psychologist that was there, and one of the things that really shocked me—and I think this shocked me enough to change my whole life—was I met this one prisoner, who was a pretty non-descript looking character. He took me for a walk out in the yard, away from a gym full of, like, weight lifters, Ax Murderers, monsters, and rapists, and we went for a walk out in the yard, and the psychologist called us back and told me later in the office that this guy, who’s about five two, a pretty non-pre-possessing guy, had, uh, made two policemen kneel in front of him, begged for their lives in reference to their families, and then shot them both in the back of the head and kicked them aside.

And the shocking thing to me was, you know, you kind of think that if you met pure evil, it would have a monstrous form. And, you know, the thing that shocked me about that was the non-descript nature of this guy, you know? His absolutely banal ordinariness—the fact that you could just walk past him on the street; you'd never know he wasn't some monster. You know, the monstrous character of Satan in your imagination is, you know, a figure that’s terrifying to behold instead of someone normal, you know what I mean, normally, in that cringing sense.

These people that you've interacted with, like what’s your—what's your reaction to them when you talk to them, the pedophiles, when you talk to them and when you arrest them?

My experience is very similar to what you just described—very nondescript people of all walks of life. We've arrested, and I've interrogated, um, educators, uh, lawyers, law enforcement, clergyman, um—and, and, uh, sitting across from them, there's but with no apparent physicality that would tell you who they are. But I will say this: when they start talking, and I look into their eyes, that's when I can—I sense something that—that really scares the hell out of me.

Um, and the way they talk about children when they get there, and it’s—it’s something that they've been able to normalize, and they're speaking to me about children almost like they're talking about, you know, the weather or, you know, talking about buying and selling children like you talk about buying and selling computer parts or an automobile or something. And that’s where I thought, you know, something has taken over you; something non-human has made you less human.

Um, and I've never been able to figure it out, uh, only that it creeps me out, and—and I usually end up getting them to confess because they have brought themselves to a place where they think they’re okay. They think that it's somehow normal. I don't know if that makes sense.

How do they do, Dr. Peterson?

Well, the—the degree of rationalization that has to with each—with each step forward in the progress of the fantasy, there has to be a step forward in the self-deception with regards to self-description, right?

So imagine that you're—you're attempting to cling to a sense of yourself, at least as normal, but even maybe as a moral agent. I mean, the—the more forthright pedophiles claim that they're only allowing children to express their true sexual desires and that what they're actually doing is forming the best relationship with the children that they've ever had.

Now, of course, there's part of them that knows that that's an absolutely bloody screaming hellish lie, but you get to that lie, like I said, with a thousand micro lies, right? And you're modifying your self-conception along the way.

I mean, have you had these people justify themselves to you? And if so, by what means do they attempt to do that?

So one person that comes to mind—absolutely, the answer is yes—and one person that comes to mind is the person depicted in the film, oshensky. Uh, this person had written, uh, articles self-published, of course; he had a book that he actually sold on Amazon, and his understanding, or his—his justification was that the puritanical society of this country has crushed the true, uh, and—and beautiful and righteous, uh, sexual experience, uh, which the most natural would be between a man and a child. A prepubescent child is—is is the, um, is the most beautiful form of humanity.

And, um, why—why take that away from a child's children would be, well, uh, conditioned to—to confront the challenges of life if only they could experience orgasmic pleasure, even in their prepubescence? Um, this is how they talk.

Right, right.

Yeah, well, you saw because of that there were attempts made in the 1970s by French intellectuals, surprise surprise, to have the age of consent reduced radically, and that was always the rationale. It was an extension of the patriarchal oppression theory in some sense, right?

That all sexual expression is essentially pure and good in its most fundamental form and it's all warped by social pressure, and if we were just allowed to express ourselves in every manner that we saw fit, that everyone would be free and we wouldn't suffer any more from the constraints of a tyrannical society, right? And it's just convenient for the bloody pedophiles that that happens to justify them doing whatever the hell they want to children who are obviously too young to consent, right?

So he is a good example. I forgot about that in the book. Jim, let me ask you. So now you didn’t have to go through the same things that Tim did, and you obviously weren't subject to the same kind of exposure, but you had to play this role and you had to act out in your imagination the darkness that characterized the people who played your enemies, let's say, on the screen.

What were the consequences for you of having to delve, even on the fictional landscape into this entire, uh, what would you say, underworld domain?

Well, let's start with your story initially when you brought up Cain and Abel. Um, in my years of working with agents like Tim, and I actually worked with other agents because Tim was very busy doing missions at the time, and I got to go in to a lot of his world. I mean, those are the guys that I play, so I don't imitate other actors; I go and meet these guys and really learn and study what they do.

Cain and Abel, for example—Abel is doing good things for God. How would Cain hurt God? By killing Abel. By wounding him. When I go and play, for example, a serial killer or a man that you mentioned earlier, Ted Bundy, who my friend, uh, broke that case and found out who he was, Mike Tando, so you're the beast that comes in. He—he, um, comes in and he, um, deceives you and—and starts with the ego and the whole thing.

And then eventually the turn is, is that you're eventually not fair or non-servient, uh, becomes, um, one who—how can I wound God the most? By killing the most innocent child. And it wounds God in the greatest way when you take these innocent children who've done nothing and have no sin, and these guys, um, uh, um have the attitude which you were mentioning earlier—all the cutting of the corners and whatnot, and ultimately they, um, they can kill the most innocent and effectively wound God's heart the most.

Um, I spent a great deal time—I did this movie, uh, Deja Vu—and I played, uh, Unabomber, and I was on the phone with, um, um, a friend—a friend of mine who broke the case and, uh, on Ted Bundy, and I talked to him a lot about, uh, serial killers. And then, um, I got to look at the—the, um, we—I was looking at Unabomber’s, uh, guys that, um, blow things up and, um, actual serial killers, but it was written more like a Ted Bundy, um, and not a—a man who is writing destiny.

And all of these things that he'd exchanged his life to take out, um, whoever they want to take out, and—but the—the voice was very similar. And so I don't go to Satan to play in this particular, um, story; I play this—this guy, this, um, bomber, and I don't go to the devil to play the devil. I think many actors make that mistake. Go to God to tell you who the devil is. That's what I do.

And it also gives me a protection.

What's the difference?

What's the difference, Jim?

Like, because that also bears on how you protect yourself from such things.

The difference—and are you saying, um, the difference is?

The difference is, is that I play the truth. So if you go and play—go to the devil to play the devil, the devil will deceive you and put something up there that, uh, deceives the public. He'll always try to hide in the shadow; he'll always try—because he doesn't like the light.

Even though he’s called the light, the Illuminator, um, the Lucifer, um, and he tries to mimic God. He tries to be like God, so there’s always, like, um, if God has love and what we see is love, he creates lust—he’s always trying to be like that.

It's like, uh, Cain trying to rip off Abel, cutting the corners and, um, so committing to—well, there's a tendency even in Milton’s, uh, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, there’s been two readings of that forever, and one of them is that Milton’s Satan is, um, an anti-hero of the most profound sort, really the embodiment of evil, and the other reading is that, um, Milton’s Satan is a—a disguised hero, and the eternal, what would you say, the eternal rebel against established order and someone to emulate in consequence.

And that Milton somehow knew that and was coding that, not precisely secretly, but subtly. And I think that's a huge mistake. I mean, I'm familiarized with Paradise Lost, and I think that Milton was an extraordinarily subtle writer in that he got everything as right as anyone ever has.

But the reason I'm bringing that up is because—so this is, okay, this is a complicated thing to untangle. But one of the things you see in Hollywood portrayals of villains—you saw this in The Silence of the Lambs; you see it frequently in mafia portrayals—is that the villain is inadvertently or even sometimes purposefully glorified, and it’s partly because he’s a rule breaker and—and—and has the attraction that goes along with that.

But I also wonder too if it’s—it has something to do with what you were describing—is that the writers and the actors find themselves, when they're trying to portray evil, pulled towards falseness in that representation. As part of the proclivity of evil to hide itself—and the danger in that is twofold: and one is the danger of deceiving the public as to the true nature of evil, because there's nothing heroic about it, quite the contrary.

And the second danger, I wonder about—you know, there’s all this speculation about Heath Ledger and the consequences that had for him of having played the Joker in such a dark manner. And, you know, I don’t know what to make of that, although I do think there is some danger in having to journey down a path of emulating evil in order to represent it.

Now you said that you turned to God, so to speak, to protect yourself against false representations of evil, but also in some ways to shield yourself. And it sounds to me reminiscent of what Tim's uh, superiors mentioned to him when they said to him that his faith might protect him from this. Question: What was—

Okay, go ahead, man.

This is the best interview I've ever had in my life. I love your line of questioning and, um, getting to what is real. My job, uh, is to give what I know to be absolutely certain and real. I hooked into Tim; he has a childlike quality to him and I stay with that innocence, and that, and don’t take that innocence's weakness or, uh, and, uh, so when I read the scripture, I feel truth, good, evil, and I find the good and let that just pierce the darkness. And it has to pierce, and I know what that light is, and I know that deception—that when I start hearing about, for example, in your life when there are two masters here, one is from the evil wicked side, but he comes in through your ego, and the other one is the light side that tells you might what you might not want to hear, but you ought to hear.

And it's not manipulative, it's truth. So I—I go to that side, then I pray, then I go through it. Like The Passion of the Christ, I looked at the Shroud of Turin, and there were two men, Christian Tinsley and Keith Vanderlin, who are experts in makeup, and the first—both of these men were agnostic, and they looked at the Shroud that Mel Gibson presented to them, and one particular way, the way it is, uh, through the negative, however, they were able to show it—you can see the track lines of Jesus; you can see the—the actual, um, bamboo sticks that they used to—to initially hit him, and then you see the cat of nine tails, the track lines—they look like the Grand Canyon in your skin, and it shocked them.

Now, these guys look at everything from decapitations, murders and everything. Prior to this, I did a movie a long time ago in New York, and I was with homicide, and I got to see the contortion of a face when someone gets murdered, and it's hard to watch.

But, when you start going into this, which is children, there is something that I can't even fathom, even with the protection of Almighty God, because it took me two years to get over this.

Two years. A friend of mine, Debbie, came into the room, and at around three o'clock in the middle of the night, I was in a chair, and she heard me just weeping. Now I would go into these black holes, and I have no idea—I don't remember it—but this was all of the screaming that I had to hear. I didn't want to hear it, but I had to hear it.

And then I was able to transform that into the movie that you just saw when I took—asked Alejandro Monteverde to move to our DP to take it and show him my eyeball so you would see a 20-foot eye to see what Tim goes through to rip his heart out.

Now it's not like, uh, this is what I want to experience any more than I want to get on a cross and have my heart broken.

I went through hypothermia—I had to have open heart surgery; I was electrocuted—struck by lightning. I understand the—the necessity of what I was going to have to go through could help bring people back to God to wake them up.

And quite frankly, more people now, Jordan, are more afraid of the devil than they are of God, because they want a happy Jesus. And the problem is, is that eventually, Jordan, we all are going to die. Eventually, that—that is going to happen.

But people—the power of the devil deceives to say, “No, no, you're going to be around for a long, long time,” and—and they never wake up. And eventually, there's a judgment, and then you have to decide—or God decides—not how you want to see yourself anymore, but how God sees you. And how God sees you is who you really are.

And so that's how I—I chose to—to go at this particular case. I had no choice but to go in, and I hear the screams in my heart. I—and I hear the screams because of the agents that I got to work with got to show me things, and they—one particular time he says, “Are you sure you want to go further?” But I was weeping so hard, I said, “This is what Tim goes through; this is what I got. I got to see it in order to go into there to—to take people to a level of will you do something? Will you do something? At some point it ends for all of us.”

And so the pain in my heart is much better than the pain in the future. And if I have to see that to save my children, to motivate me to save my niece, to tell my sister, “No, walking home at 13 years old from school is not a good choice,” not a good choice; my sister says to me, “No, I want my sister”—my daughter, excuse me—to have the same kind of experience I have, and I said, “No, not until this changes. You need to understand.”

So—and my sister is a good, great mother, but she wasn't aware because the media that's supposed to do a good job to tell the truth, well, they're going into that direction, which is let's kind of twist it and change it and not talk about it or the three-letter agencies that aren't telling the truth.

Well, go ahead, Jordan.

How has this changed you? How has experiencing that material and having to play it out changed you?

I—I’d give my life in a heartbeat. Changed me. I'm less concerned about myself than I am about hurting. I—I will tell you this right now: I would absolutely die if this—if this were to change the world and get rid of trafficking and pornography and all of the eight arms of this octopus that has to be destroyed. The only way you can destroy is take the head out; if that hit, I'd give my life for it in a heartbeat.

Tim, let me ask you a question. Jim referred to this as an awkward question; I don't know how to progress with it exactly right, but he said that he tried to play you with a certain kind of innocence. And, you know, there's a gospel line, and the line is, “Unless you become as a little child, you will in no way enter the kingdom of heaven.” And it’s a very, very subtle line because it doesn’t say “unless you stay as a child,” right? It says “unless you become as a child.”

And that's a very—it's a very paradoxical injunction, and it means something like this: it means if you rediscover the innocence and humility and capacity for play and wonder and open-ended trust that you had as a child, but you still have all the wisdom that you have as an adult after having seen the world, then you have entered into—you might say a new domain and a more elevated form of being. And Jim said that he was struck when talking to you about, uh, it with regard to this childlike innocence that he saw on you, which is very peculiar thing to observe in someone who's had to expose himself to all the terrible things that you've encountered.

And so, I don't—I don't have a more fully developed question than that. I guess I just like your response to that set of observations.

I do think—I think I know what Jim's talking about. Um, when we're doing operations, as you see depicted in Sound of Freedom, it’s some crazy stuff. We're going into crazy places; we're talking to monsters and demons, and if I were to apply all the things I—I know, the things that take me down—the images of children, um, I could be jaded and less innocent.

Um, I think this might go back to the—the—the boss who asked me to start this work back in 2002 by saying that we think you can handle this because of your faith. So when I—I do try to be a childlike—childlike when it comes to my relationship with—with God, and there's a scripture that I repeat in my head constantly as I am going into these dark places, and that's where I become like a child through that recitation and my relationship with God, or even more particularly with Jesus.

Um, because it’s Jesus who says the line— and you've already quoted it, Jordan, uh, better than a millstone be placed around your neck and you toss through the bottom of the sea and that you should hurt one of these little ones. Um, that's so powerful to me because it's so—it allows me to read—to read, reduce everything to just an innocent—I hope—childlike relationship with—with my Savior, with my God.

Um, because I know where he stands on this, and I might not know everything, and I don’t know how this is going to resolve in my head. I don't know how I'm going to heal the millions of holes burned into my brain, but I do know that if I subject myself completely to—to a—an understanding and a testimony that—that Jesus believes something—he gets mafioso, this is cement shoes kind of talk—it’s not—it’s not flipping tables outside the temple; I mean he’s talking about violence.

He's speaking violence, but it's—it’s righteous, and that’s where he stands on children being abused, and that’s where I find so—there’s a—there’s another idea, there’s another idea that lurks in the passion account, hey, that—that’s really quite stunning and horrible.

So the—the passion story is an archetypal tragedy, and the reason for that is that a tragedy is when something terrible happens to someone, but, uh, a more profound tragedy is when the worst possible thing happens to the least deserving person, and so that’s the passion story in some ways in a nutshell, right? You have a man who, by universal admission, even on the part of his enemies, is at minimum a very good man, who undergoes the worst possible sequence of betrayal and punishment.

And that’s the story of the tragedy of human life writ large. But there's more to it than that, because there's a mythological insistence, along with that, that Christ was not only crucified but that he had to descend into the depths of Hell itself and Harrow it, and what that means to me, psychologically speaking, let’s say, is that you’re called upon before rebirth—that’s a good way of thinking about it—to not only bear the brunt of the tragedy of existence, but to face malevolence head-on, right? To go into the deepest and darkest possible places, and what would you say?

It's—and—and, well, redeeming them to the degree that that's possible, simultaneously redeem yourself. And so the notion there is that the brightest possible light is only possible through the descent into the darkest possible realm of blackness, and that actually goes beyond death into malevolence itself.

Now, Jim said, you know, because you might say, well, there’s nothing that you should be more afraid of than death, but Jim said, you know, he's appalled enough about the existence of malevolence that he would be willing to give his life to eradicate it. And so that obviously means that for Jim, malevolence itself is a more terrifying specter than mere death, or even mere suffering.

And then there is this gospel notion that unless you’re willing to take the weight of Hell onto yourself, essentially, um, voluntarily, that you can’t go through that process of descent and rebirth. And that is associated in the gospel accounts, let’s say, with that rebirth into the spirit of childhood.

And so you have done what you could to face the ultimate reaches of darkness itself. What has that done for you? And then also, you made some very interesting comments about your wife. You know, you said that in some ways you were hoping she would tell you to, you know, be sensible and come home, but she didn't. She told you to go put yourself on the line. And there's a huge story there that's touched on in the movie, but not delved into in any to any great regard.

How has your encounter with the darkness that you've seen made you a better person? And—and what has that done with your relationship with your wife?

I think it's—it’s made me a better person because the—the weight that you speak of that—that is on your back is unbearable unless you can give it to some other power. In this case, in my case, to Jesus himself. And that's what—to subject myself completely and repeat his words in my mind because I know where he stands on it, and he’ll take it from me.

And I felt that—I have felt that in ways I can't even articulate that don’t make any sense on a scientific level. The burden is lifted, and that's what gives me clarity and courage to do things I otherwise wouldn't dream of doing, uh, in order to help children. And it's—it’s a concept that my wife understands. In fact, I’ll tell you this: she—it’s like she morphed into some kind of a therapist in that moment after she told me that her salvation might be on the line.

She's much more advanced than I am in every way, and especially spiritually. And she helped me to see that very thing—that give the burden to—to God, and then you can be—but you have to subject yourself like a child in order to do that. And recognize you can’t on your own do it.

But she—she ran me through this exercise; I don’t know where she got it. Maybe it was a download from heaven, but she said, “Do you see the two paths you’re going on? Either you're going to Colombia, and you do this operation, and what does that look like?” And I said, “It looks horrifying; it’s scary; it’s dark, because there's cobwebs. I mean, I’m literally imagining this—there's—there's spiders; there’s evil things.” And she said, “What’s the other path?”

And I said, “Well, the other path is—is light. Um, it’s, you know, I can see at 50, I get to retire, and then I don’t have to, you know, I’m—I'm paid a federal government salary my whole life, and benefits; and that seems secure to me, and that seems comfortable.”

Then she says, “Close your eyes, and—and you’re with your maker; you've passed through this life, and you're talking to your maker, and he has two questions for you: One, could you have saved the kids? And two, did you do it?” That’s your interview.

And she—and and I got it shocked me. I thought, “Oh, that’s going to be a bad interview if I don’t have the right answer, if I don’t make the right decision here.” And then she says, “Okay, now go back to those two paths. What do you see?”

And I'm telling you, the cobwebs and creepy things were now on the path of staying in my federal government comfortable job. I thought, “What might I lose? What blessings might not come?” And then she said, “What do you see down the path of Colombia?”

And she said, “I see warmth; I see—I can’t see everything, but that’s the path I want.” And I think that’s what that means, is I will give it to God and do the right thing and subject myself like a child.

I hope that made sense.

Well, well, you know, look, the reason that people lie and the reason they remain silent is because they think that things will be easier for them and better, at least in the short term. But the psychological literature on this is pretty damn clear; I think clearer than any other element of the clinical psychology literature, which is that you avoid things that stand in your way that frighten you at your great peril.

If you cower from them in silence or you turn away seeking security, even, or even sensible security, you violate the principle of your own strength. And if you violate the principle of your own strength, you become weak. And if you're weak, there is no security. Like, if you're weak and you have a pension, you're weak with a pension.

All that'll mean is that you'll live longer in terror; that's not helpful. And the alternative—and that there’s also an ethos in the biblical stories in particular, and it's a very interesting ethos; it’s very much worth knowing, and one is that if you say the truth and nothing else, you'll have an immense adventure as a consequence.

You won’t know what's going to happen to you, and you have to let go of your clinging to the—to the outcome; you have to let go. But the truth will reveal the world the way it’s intended to be revealed, and the consequence for you will be that you’ll have the adventure of your life.

And the other part of that ethos is this, and it makes perfect sense to me. I can’t see how it can be any other way, which is that whatever makes itself manifest as a consequence of the truth is the best possible reality that could be manifest, even if you can't see it.

And you know, in my own life, I’ve been attacked many times by people who were attempting to demolish my reputation and take me out, and that’s put my family at risk—and many times we’ve gone through this, a lot. What we have observed is that if we stick to our guns, and we say what we believe to be the case—and I say we, because it's a collaborative enterprise—I’m always discussing things with my family—that there’s a period of intense discomfort, but the—in the aftermath of that, and that’s often several months or sometimes even several years later, things switch around and reverse in a manner that brings benefits that can’t even be fathomed.

So—and it is a matter of faith, right? So the faith is something like this: look, are you going to make your way through life with silence and falsehoods, or are you going to make your life your way through life with truth? And there's going to be a price for the truth, but your vision showed you there was a price for the security, too, right?

Once—once you allowed your imagination to manifest itself, you saw that the pathway of security was actually the one that was covered with spider webs, demons, and snakes. And, you know, I see that—I saw that with faculty members at the university over and over. They would take the so-called secure path forward, and all they did was violate the integrity of their own souls, right?

All that security is false, and obviously, your wife, for some reason, it’s quite the miraculous part of that story, I would say, that your wife was behind you like that, especially because you said you had six kids at the time, you know?

So how do you think she knew this? You said her faith is more developed than yours, and—and that she knows things you don't, but what was it about her life, did you think, that enabled her to stand behind you in this crazy venture you went on when she had every reason to make you—mean, you were—the movie says you were within, what, months of vesting your pension—how many?

12 weeks? Something like that?

I don’t—I don’t—I can’t remember the exact time, but yeah, that was the—my accountant came to me and showed me how much—how many millions of dollars this would amount to, that I was walking away from. It was ridiculous.

I want to say 12 million dollars or something, a number I couldn't even fathom. But you’re walking away from that, and that really tossed me, and that’s the thing that led me to Catherine and said, “This is what we’d be walking away from.”

Why does she have this thing?

Um, it's a mystery to me. I can say this: having given birth and raised six children, I've watched that process. There’s something, I think, that happens to—to women, at least in the case of my wife, that, um, there’s some insight that comes from that process, and—and childbirth and rearing a child that she's had to rely on God just to get through that process, and then have this little creature that you’re in charge of.

I think her relationship with God allowed—through motherhood—allowed her to have insights, um, that I didn’t have. I think she came with certain gifts as well that before this life.

But whatever it was, she saw immediately and—and on the spot was able to run me through that exercise that really is consistent with—with your understanding of that process, uh, Dr. Peterson. So, um, I don't know; she's a miracle; she's a miracle to me, and none of this would’ve happened without her.

Well, okay, so you quit your job, and you put your pension on the line and your wife was not only fully on board with that, but perversely enough encouraged you to do so.

How has it—how has the financial support that made your continued existence and also the operations that you've undertaken—how has that manifested itself since? Like, you—you don’t have your pension and the government behind you, but obviously you’ve gathered resources around you personally, and—and practically. How—tell me how that came about.

Well, I’ll add this piece because I—that was my big concern, and Catherine said to me—and she believed it—this is all in that same conversation. She said, “I don’t care if we end up living in a tent. We will not go back to our maker instead we didn’t try to help these children.”

So that helped ease my mind because I thought, well then, okay, if we lose our house—uh, now the—the blessings did come. Uh, you know, uh, Glenn Beck was the person who actually funded the rescue operation that you see depicted in the film—that very first one.

Um, he got our—he got us started, put a huge amount of faith, and frankly risk in—in doing that. Um, but that was going to get us only about six to eight months before we would be in trouble. But what happened was the success happened. The peace that I felt in making the decision to go was that new path that I couldn't see everything, but it felt right; it felt good; it felt Godly, and I knew it’d be okay.

And we've never had a worse month, in the month before; we've only grown with success, spread success. Donations start coming in; opportunities come in. And frankly, I think I'll be better off financially, uh, as I look at my future than I would