The Eric Metaxas Show
Truth | Humor | Hope The Official podcast for Eric Metaxas!
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Episodes
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#239 - Brant Hansen
Friday, November 6, 2026
Brant Hansen joins Eric for a long conversation about what Jesus actually meant by "love your enemies," and why so many Christians skip that command.They talk through contempt in public life, how to attack bad ideas without demeaning people made in God's image, why turning the other cheek is strength rather than weakness, and how praying for the person who cuts you off in traffic can change your own heart. Hansen draws on the Sermon on the Mount, Corrie ten Boom, Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce; Eric brings George Washington's officers and Chuck Colson's line about doing hard justice with sorrow...
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#238 - Michael Clary
Thursday, November 5, 2026
Southern Baptist pastor D. Michael Clary talks with Eric about his new book, Loser Theology: Why the Weak Will Not Inherit the Earth, and the passive, retreating faith he says has trained many Christians to lose.Clary explains why Jesus said the meek, not the weak, will inherit the earth, and why meekness means strength under control. He also covers what "turn the other cheek" does and doesn't mean (including whether a Christian may defend his home), the difference between real humility and a performance of humility, and why he says the biggest tell about a pastor is what he won't say. Eric...
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#237 - Rod Martin
Wednesday, November 4, 2026
Recorded the morning after the 2026 midterms. Eric, Kevin McCullough and Rod D. Martin on what happened, why it happened and where Christians go from here. Eric opens with his post comparing this moment to the generals who undercut George Washington in 1776, and with Romans 8:28.Kevin McCullough of That KEVIN Show, back after his Election Day read, argues gas prices drove the result, and why he believes the church needs to be "praying twice as much as we are acting." Then Rod D. Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Capital and author of Trump's New World Re-Order (foreword by Eric), on why he ...
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#236 - Willy Rice
Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Recorded on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2026. Dr. Willy Rice, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, on what our choices mean for our grandchildren and the millions of Christians he estimates may not vote, and Kevin McCullough with his Election Day read. Eric opens by saying why he believes not voting is a sin. Then Dr. Rice, pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Florida, for 22 years, explains why he says pastors who stepped back from cultural issues to be more effective "lost our voice," and why he estimates around 30 million evangelicals may not vote. Eric recalls what Dietric...
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#235 - Ed Martin
Monday, November 2, 2026
An Uber driver who wouldn't turn off the music, a viral AI video of President Trump 'unveiling' a portrait of Jesus that never happened, and former U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin on what he says he found in Jack Smith's emails. First, the ride to the airport, and why Eric prayed for that driver the whole way. Then a conservative friend's post that Eric calls antisemitic, and the "Judas" text that ended the friendship. And an AI video, posted in April 2026 and still circulating, of President Trump pulling back a curtain to reveal a portrait of Jesus. It never happened: the real footage, from...
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#234 - Chuck Swindoll
Friday, October 30, 2026
Chuck Swindoll has been in ministry for 62 years, but as a boy he could barely put a sentence together. "One of my earliest memories is my mother telling me that I was a mistake," he tells Eric. By junior high he stuttered so badly he wanted to hide. Then Richard Nieme, a drama and speech teacher who had just come to Milby High School in Houston from New York, tapped him on the shoulder at his locker: "Charles, I want you in my debate class." His first response was, "Me?" Within six months he was putting sentences together, and he played the lead in the senior play "without a stammer, stutt...
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#223 - Ryan Bethea
Thursday, October 29, 2026
Halloween is days away, and Allie Beth Stuckey has Christians arguing about horror films. On her Relatable podcast she said believers shouldn't be fans of horror in general. Is she right? Eric has strong views, and he talks it through with Ryan Bethea, creator and host of The Exorcist Files, who thinks t⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Chapter -- Honest, fast, and free Medicare ...
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#232 - Dr. Mark Christian
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
Dr. Mark Christian grew up in Egypt as the firstborn son of a respected physician and religious leader. He was leading prayers in mosques by age nine and later led prayers in Mecca. He studied hard to prove his faith was true, and the more he studied, the more questions he had. Asking them, he says, made him a threat to his own father. In his memoir, The Apostate: My Search for Truth, he tells what happened next: a call at dawn to his father's old medical office, a fire trap behind the door, and the stumble on a rug that he and Eric believe saved his life. Then, in the back of an ambulance,...
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#230 - Allen Jackson
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Pastor Allen Jackson of World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, has a challenge for "spectator" Christians: stop sitting in the stands and complaining. Too many believers, he says, sit out with excuses like "I won't support Donald Trump because he doesn't talk nice, or I won't support Pete Hegseth because he has a tattoo or whatever nonsense." His answer: "I would rather be engaged." He explains why "be kind" is not the 11th commandment ("the goal isn't to be kind to wickedness; the goal is to overcome evil with good") and why prayer comes first. His new book is Let's Pray for Ame...
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#230 - John Zmirak
Monday, October 26, 2026
The midterms are one week away, and Eric has a warning for every Christian: "If you do not vote, your soul is in danger." John Zmirak of The Stream joins Eric to talk about what's at stake on November 3, why Eric is encouraged that the Justice Department is finally looking into Ilhan Omar, and why Zmirak says candidates like Ilhan Omar and Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed are "laughing at" Christians who stay home.First, a debate Eric has wanted to have: did Jesus have brothers and sisters? Zmirak explains that Martin Luther, the early Anglicans and "basically every Christian before the year 1600"...
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#229 - Dimas Salaberrios | Angelos Kyriakides
Friday, October 23, 2026
Doctors called it schizophrenia. He believes it was demonic. Urban missionary and apologist Angelos Kyriakides tells Eric his story: he was getting high at 12, using drugs by 16, and had a breakdown at 17. He explains how a Good Will Hunting scene at 3 a.m. and a mentor who slammed a Bible on the floor finally brought him to Christ, and why he believes the West needs a public confrontation with the gospel.First, filmmaker and pastor Dimas Salaberrios, author of Street God, talks about his new thriller, Fettered, the story of a girl from the Bronx who wakes up in the woods after a prom-night...
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#228 - Rod Martin
Thursday, October 22, 2026
Did the Trump administration really call Putin a "humanitarian," or did the media miss the point? Rod Martin joins Eric to break down Steve Witkoff's comments after Russia freed American Stephen Hubbard, and why Eric says it's diplomacy, not praise.They also take on the media's soft treatment of Ilhan Omar after the federal search of her home, the jobs and investment boom that Larry Kudlow calls the "greatest story never told," why gas costs more than it should, and how a few votes per precinct could decide the House in the midterms.Rod explains the argument of his new book, Trump's New Wor...
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#227 - Dinesh D'Souza
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
Was the childhood home of Jesus found beneath a convent in Nazareth, and why won't the scholars say it out loud? Dinesh D'Souza joins Eric to walk through the discoveries in his new book, The Stones Cry Out: Biblical Archaeology, Prophecy, and the Last Days, and his companion PragerU documentary series.Dinesh describes standing in the pit where the prophet Jeremiah was thrown and trapped in mud, and how the seals of the two officials who put him there have been dug up in Jerusalem. He tells the story of archaeologist Eilat Mazar, who used the Bible as a map to find what she believed was Kin...
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#226 - Larry Taunton
Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Sold in Ottoman slave markets as a teenage Christian girl, then rescued by an American, Aurora Mardiganian told the world what happened to Armenia's Christians in her 1918 memoir Ravished Armenia. Larry Alex Taunton thought her story was so important that he brought more than 100 copies to hand out after his September 11 talk, "The Cross and the Quran," which has drawn millions of views.Larry tells Eric what he has seen firsthand in Africa, the Middle East and Europe: a cleric in a Cairo bazaar spitting at a woman for wearing jeans, the phone apps where women have been sold as "domestics," ...
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#225 - John Zmirak
Monday, October 19, 2026
Netflix's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew has Meryl Streep voicing Aslan and a reported budget of $280 million. And John Zmirak says test audiences hated it. Eric and John take on Greta Gerwig's adaptation of C.S. Lewis, why Hollywood keeps buying beloved properties only to turn them against their fans, and the one scene online critics may have gotten backwards.Then John explains why a Dallas theater's drag-queen brunch screening of The Fellowship of the Ring enraged him in a way the Narnia news didn't. He argues it's willful vandalism that mirrors exactly what Tolkien's dark lord does: twist...
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#224 - John West
Friday, October 16, 2026
Karl Marx is often remembered as an economist who wanted to help the poor. But John G. West of Discovery Institute says that as a young man, Marx wrote dark poetry about forfeiting heaven: "My soul, once true to God, is chosen for hell." Eric and John discuss why communism isn't merely wrong economics but, they argue, spiritually anti-Christian from A to Z, and why most Christian colleges won't teach students its history.West tells the forgotten story of "human zoos," including the young African man the Bronx Zoo put in a cage with chimpanzees as a "missing link," and how the eugenics crusa...
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#223 - Ben Schettler
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Ben Schettler, co-founder and president of the Center for Truth in Love, set up a debate table in Washington Square Park the way Charlie Kirk did on campuses. He says park police shut him down on May 19 while a drug dealer sat untouched a few yards away. The next night a mob surrounded him, he was punched from behind, his phone was stolen and he was taken away in an ambulance.In that ambulance, he recited Psalm 56:11 — the same verse his five-year-old son Cranston was speaking that night at church in Florida: "In the Lord have I put my trust. I will not fear what man can do unto me."Yesterd...
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#222 - Rod Martin
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Ilhan Omar's home has been raided, and Eric says that's "earth shattering" because "our side doesn't do this kind of stuff unless it's legit." Strategist Rod Martin, author of the forthcoming Trump's New World Reorder, joins Eric to discuss what he says comes next, including a reported subpoena for Omar's sister over a USAID grant of about $20 million.Before that, Eric reacts to President Trump asking Kimberly Guilfoyle to step down as ambassador to Greece, and, as a proud Greek American, puts his own name forward for the job (and makes his case for returning the Elgin Marbles).Eric and Rod...
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#221 - Brian Kilmeade
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Brian Kilmeade joins Eric on the release day of his new book, Uniting the States, to tell six moments that he believes forged the American miracle. They include John Adams defending the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, a mysterious fog that let Washington's army escape Brooklyn, Shays' Rebellion, the War of 1812, the Louisiana Purchase, and John Quincy Adams' crusade against slavery in Congress, with a young Abraham Lincoln sitting nearby.Then filmmaker Dimas Salaberrios, author of Street God, shares how he went from New York drug kingpin to follower of Christ. He says that right...
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#220 - Joe Infranco
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Joe Infranco didn't initially believe what he was hearing.People with nonspeaking autism were beginning to communicate through spelling, revealing thoughts, interests and abilities that many around them never realized were there. Then some began telling Joe something even stranger: they said they could see angels, demons, Jesus and an unseen spiritual realm.Infranco, a pastor and longtime trial attorney, joins Eric to discuss his book Decoding Cody: Secrets of the Spectrum from People with Autism Who See, Hear, and Smell in the Unseen Realm. He explains why he initially considered hallucina...
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#219 - Abdu Murray
Sunday, October 11, 2026
What if the greatest danger of artificial intelligence isn't that machines become more human, but that humans become more like machines?Christian apologist and author Abdu Murray joins Eric to discuss his new book Fake ID: How AI and Identity Ideology Are Collapsing Reality and What to Do About It. Abdu argues that the explosion of artificial intelligence and modern identity ideology share a deeper connection: both emerge in a culture increasingly willing to place feelings, preferences and technological power above objective reality.Eric and Abdu discuss AI deepfakes, transhumanism, whether...
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#218 - Tim Mulgrew
Thursday, October 8, 2026
What does it actually mean to be saved?Tim Mulgrew, author of Christian: A Contract With God: Understanding the Terms of True Salvation*, joins Eric to examine one of the most sobering warnings in Scripture: Jesus saying, “I never knew you.”Tim argues that many Christians have been taught to think salvation is simply a matter of walking an aisle, praying a prayer, getting baptized or mentally agreeing with the right beliefs. Eric and Tim discuss the difference between merely identifying as a Christian and actually being born again, why genuine faith should transform the way a person lives, ...
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#217 - Dan Chung
Thursday, October 8, 2026
She escaped North Korea and eventually reached safety in South Korea. Years later, she still sleeps with her shoes beside the bed because part of her remains prepared to run.Dan Chung, Executive Director of Crossing Borders and author of *A Hard Freedom: The Dreams and Trauma of North Korean Refugees*, joins Eric to share the extraordinary stories of people who have escaped one of the world’s most repressive regimes.Dan describes North Korean women trafficked after crossing into China, a mother whose dying son asked for one final bowl of rice, a young refugee who spent two years unable to l...
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#216 - Ryan Helfenbein
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
What did America’s Founders actually mean by “religious liberty”?Ryan Helfenbein of Liberty University joins Eric to discuss the Christian influences on America’s founding, the Constitution, religious liberty, and why he believes the modern understanding of religious pluralism differs significantly from the framework held by many early American leaders.Eric and Ryan also discuss the postwar changes that reshaped the public role of religion, what Ryan calls “evangelical Gnosticism,” why many churches became hesitant to engage political and cultural questions, and the relationship between Chr...
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#215 - Billy Hallowell
Monday, October 5, 2026
The viral image of a passenger duct-taped to his airplane seat only told part of the story.Billy Hallowell joins Eric with new details from interviews with two of the passengers who stepped in during the bizarre midflight incident involving Jonathan Cahn. Billy says one of the men was a retired police officer who helped restrain the passenger after the situation became physical. According to those witnesses, there was blood, the passenger bit one of the men restraining him, screamed that everyone on the plane was going to die, and continued behaving erratically after the emergency landing.E...
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#214 - Stephen Kent
Friday, October 2, 2026
What do the stories you loved as a child reveal about who you are today?Stephen Kent, creator of Geeky Stoics and coauthor of Great Escape: 30 Reflections on Stoicism, Faith, and the Wisdom of Great Stories, joins Eric to explore why stories from C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Star Wars and other childhood favorites can shape the way we understand courage, meaning, faith and the world around us.They discuss Tolkien’s defense of escapism, why Stoicism has become popular with young men, the search for meaning in a culture increasingly dissatisfied with nihilism, and the surprising story of the “...
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#213 - Rod Martin
Thursday, October 1, 2026
A commercial flight bound for Israel suddenly plunged after its copilot stabbed the captain, forcing passengers and crew into a desperate effort to regain control of the aircraft. Eric and Rod Martin discuss the extraordinary Flydubai incident, what it raises about airline security, and the broader changes taking place in relations between Israel and several Arab nations.Eric also reacts to Vanity Fair’s new profile of Erika Kirk and explains why the article surprised him, despite disagreeing with portions of it.Later, Rod breaks down new economic data, including record median household inc...
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#212 - Pat Boone
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Pat Boone joins Eric for a wide-ranging trip through more than seven decades of American music and entertainment.Pat recalls breaking into the charts in the early days of rock and roll, when Elvis Presley was once his opening act and the two spent years competing near the top of the charts. He also shares some remarkable statistics from his recording career, including his claim that he recorded roughly 2,700 songs, more than Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby.Pat tells Eric about a country song that came to him in a dream, his surprising connection to Randy Newman’s first record, Roger Miller, Bu...
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#211 - Joe Loconte
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Meryl Streep is officially set to voice Aslan in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, and Eric has some serious questions about what the choice says about Hollywood’s approach to Lewis.Eric and author, educator, and filmmaker Joe LaConte discuss Aslan’s role in the Narnia stories, C.S. Lewis’s understanding of Christianity, masculinity and femininity, and why they believe modern adaptations often impose contemporary ideas on older works rather than respecting the author’s original vision.They also explore the friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. T...
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#210 - Larry Taunton
Monday, September 28, 2026
An undercover investigation in Mexico City leads to an extraordinary claim about a new way of getting into the United States.Larry Taunton joins Eric to share what he says his investigators recently discovered while looking into changing migrant routes after the U.S. border crackdown. Taunton says an undercover operative was told he could obtain an authentic U.S. biometric visa for $3,000 in just three days and even pay after the visa was issued. Taunton explains why he stopped the operation before putting his source at greater risk and says he intends to pass the information to the State D...