Tales of Abundance
Tales of Abundance artwork

All episodes

He Was Cheating. She Was Cheating. Now They've Saved Thousands of Marriages.

Episode 92 · 23 September 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

Open on Spotify

Show notes

How to Save a Marriage After an Affair: Greg and Julie Alexander's Story

How do you save a marriage after an affair when both spouses cheated? Greg and Julie Alexander lived it in 1997. They went on to found The Alexander House, a faith-based nonprofit, and its free Marriage Disciples program. Greg explains the forgiveness and healing process, what changes for couples facing gray divorce, and the blueprint most couples never get.

Both of them cheated. Both were ready to walk. Then a priest asked one question — and Greg Alexander spent two days reading the Bible for the first time.

What he found didn't point at his wife. It pointed at him.

5,500 couples later, Greg and Julie Alexander's Marriage Disciples program runs a 98% success rate — and they don't charge a dime.

In this episode, they walk through the blueprint most couples never receive: what actually causes marriages to collapse quietly, why the servant spouse mindset feels like losing but works like winning, and how to forgive an affair — not just move past it, but actually heal it, step by step.

Forgiveness, Marriage Restoration and the Blueprint Couples Never Get

What you'll discover:

  • The "six essential elements" framework that's restored thousands of marriages — and where it came from
  • Why Greg says his most difficult couples are often his easiest — and what that means for yours
  • The #1 thing 100% of couples say changed everything: the forgiveness and healing exercise
  • How social media, dating apps, and pornography are reshaping the modern marriage crisis
  • Why John Paul II's statement — "As the family goes, so goes the nation" — is more relevant than ever

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Introduction — The $100 billion cost of broken families
  • [01:06] Greg & Julie's story — when both partners cheated
  • [03:05] The question that changed everything
  • [09:55] Does this work if you're not Catholic or Christian?
  • [12:07] What the process actually looks like when you come to The Alexander House
  • [17:37] When one spouse isn't sure they want to stay
  • [20:27] The one thing most struggling couples are missing
  • [25:14] Why most couples never had a blueprint for marriage
  • [28:20] What's changed since 1997 — social media, dating apps, pornography
  • [32:04] The empty nest season nobody prepares you for
  • [36:06] The "gray divorce" wave — getting proactive before crisis hits
  • [42:47] How to find The Alexander House & Marriage Disciples
  • [46:18] Abundance Briefing: Bitcoin & the broken fiat system
  • [52:48] Indian farmers + tiny lasers — the energy revolution
  • [56:04] AI doomerism — is it real or political theater?
  • [1:02:36] The grandparent effect — your longevity may shape your grandchildren's survival

🌿 SPONSORED BY AG1 (Athletic Greens)

Fuel your health and performance from the inside out.

Try AG1: https://shop.drinkag1.com/tales

About Greg and Julie Alexander

Greg and Julie Alexander are the founders of The Alexander House, a faith-based nonprofit that has walked thousands of couples back from the brink of divorce since 1999. After both surviving affairs and nearly divorcing in 1997, they discovered God's blueprint for marriage — and committed their lives to sharing it. Their Marriage Disciples program has a 98% success rate and is completely free to couples who go through it.

Find Greg and Julie:

Find us online:

Hit Subscribe so you never miss an episode of Tales of Abundance. 🔔

Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It comes from the episode recording and has speaker labels. It hasn't been proofread yet, and the time markers follow the raw recording, so they can run a minute or two off the published audio.

Dr. John Oberg [00:01]: Divorce in the United States costs about $15,000 to $25,000 in legal bills if it goes simple, but that's just the legal invoice. The real bill is way worse than that. People who divorce give up up to three quarters of their net worth trying to get out. And then there's, you know, a second household for children, a second set of everything if there's kids, and and the kids get put in the middle. One study put the national tab for a family breakdown at over $100 billion a year for a country. And so back in 1997, Greg Alexander had a job. a big, successful job that everyone thought was amazing. He has the house, the two kids, a wife, but on the inside can barely stand being there. And it it ended up that he went to talk to someone and someone asked about you know, did he know God's plan for marriage? And what came out the other side is a really uplifting story that's led to thousands and thousands of marriages being healed. Greg, every time I talk about the Alexander House, I get just this warm fuzzy feeling inside for all the people you're helping. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. And and can you jump us back into nineteen ninety-seven, what happened, and how we've come so far so fast?

Greg Alexander [01:09]: wow, John I I I like to try to forget about that time, but I I can you

Dr. John Oberg [01:13]: Yeah.

Greg Alexander [01:14]: will 'cause it of course a very painful time in in my life. In fact, I'll I'll kind of set up the evening as to how it took place. a friend of my wife called and said that she wants to stop by and visit, as she had a a late Christmas present for my wife. And she gets to the house and Julie's upstairs getting dressed, and I called upstairs for her to come down, to which she did. She sat at the table, she looked at her friend, and she said, Well, I hear you have a present. pres Christmas present for me. She said, yes, of course I do. And she said, I want to know, how long have you been sleeping with my husband? And needless to say, the the air went from my lungs, my jaw hit the table. I'm like, my goodness. But you know, John, a lot of times in those situations you you kind of get a sense that something is going on. And so before I had confirmation myself, I too began to step outside of the marriage relationship, if you will. And so this was a situation where in that moment I want to be full of anger, full of rage, and just lash out at my wife. But I had to pull back and let her know that I was just as guilty as well. And I always kind of jokingly say that God knows exactly what he needs to allow to happen in order for us to kind of come correct, if you will. And that unfortunately is what it took. But as you kind of alluded to, as a result, it has brought many fruits, not only in our lives, but in the in the countless of lives that God has allowed us to be able to touch.

Dr. John Oberg [02:37]: And so y out of this, you know, people can check out the Alexander House and this kind of marriage ministry, that you've been working on for almost coming on thirty years now. I that's it's amazing. And I'm and I've heard you tell this story, you know, dozens of times. W w I mean How d take us back into how you turned it around and what you learned and, you know, what things people want to hear about. This shows about abundance and marriage

Greg Alexander [03:01]: Okay.

Dr. John Oberg [03:01]: is commonly linked to abundance. And protecting marriage, of course, then becomes an important skill set for protecting abundance, right?

Greg Alexander [03:10]: Right, right. Well, the turnaround began with this this awesome priest challenging challenging us to gain an understanding of what God's plan for marriage was as opposed to what we thought it was. You know, unlike Julia and myself, we we grow up in our respective family of origins. We see what mom and dad are doing, we see what the neighbors down the streets are doing, we we tune in onto social media, T V and everything else to try to get some understanding as to what marriage looks like and and what how it should be lived. And unfortunately for us, those were our our resources, our point of references, if you will, and none of which even came close to what it was that God had intended marriage to be. And so again, after that discovery, I just simply concluded that that if our marriage relationship was having to resort to these kind of behaviors, then there there can't be much of a marriage left. So I asked Julie for a divorce and in her wisdom, she wanted to make sure that we exhausted any opportunity for any type of reconciliation. So it was her suggestion, hey let's go talk to our parish priest. with whom we spent about 30 minutes and found out real quick that he couldn't do much for us. He referred us out to a Catholic Christian counselor who gave us a $100 history lesson as to how our relationship was very much like the Civil War and even went on to suggest that maybe we're not meant to be together in the first place. Maybe you should divorce. Leaving there hearing what we thought we wanted to hear, we went home and proceeded to tell our seven to nine-year-old kids that mom and dad are going to get a divorce. And despite the fact that they were huddled in the corner embracing each other, John, literally crying their eyes out, we just dismissed it. they'll be fine. You know, if they grow up and manifest any issues or problems, we'll just send them to counseling. That's what Bob and Mary down the street did. And they seem to get through this. Well well, they'll be okay. Children are resilient and all those different lies that we're told in the beginning. But we had a visiting priest filled in our parish that particular summer, and the best I can explain it was just a great teacher of the faith. He began to to kind of break open the gospels for us. And and so much so that Julie and I just felt drawn to him and started meeting with him in between. Between the two mass times, and we we later discovered he was a tribunal vicar for the diocese. And if we didn't know anything else about our faith at that time, we at least knew that this was the guy that did that annulment thing. So in our ignorance, we thought God was blessing us with this awesome priest because certainly he was gonna be the one to show us how we can get divorced, get annulled, and go our separate ways. So Judas set an appointment to see him. Unbeknownst to him, the problems and issues that we had, he thought we were coming by for a social visit. And so for the next 45 minutes, we proceeded to build our case as to why we felt we could no longer stay married. You know, she did this, he did this, and volume of faults and blames back and forth. But when we were done, he leaned forward. He said, Look, guys, I understand your plight and your situation. Let me ask you a few questions. What is God's plan for marriage? What does our church teach about marriage? What are some of the writings of Saint Paul and the various holy fathers pertaining to the sacraments of marriage? Julie and I looked at each other dumbfounded, shrugged our shoulders, and said, We don't know, Father, and and what does this have to do with us? You know, we we go to church every Sunday, we used to be in love, now we're not. And we were simply hoping that you can show us how we can get out of this and and start over again somewhere else. He said, but what I suggest is that you go back and find the answers to the questions that I've asked before you make a final decision. And to make a longer story short, that's exactly what I did. Went home, opened the Bible for the first time, found my way to St. Paul in Ephesians, which, how funny it was then, I ran across the verse, wives be submissive to your husbands. So my immediate thought was, here's the problem in our marriage. I got Miss Fitness Queen want to make a million dollars over here. She's just not doing the things I want her to do in this marriage. So I went back and continued to read as I thought, I found this awesome information. But then I w read the lines, husbands love your wives, like Christ love the church. And I remember thinking to myself, man, like like Christ loved the church. Christ died for the church. Am I dying to myself for some of the things that she was wanting and desiring in the marriage? And unfortunately the answer was no, because everything was about me and the things that I wanted. And I didn't ever think of it in the context of how it is that I should be there to serve her. And so after two days of just solid reading, John, Bible. Catechism Catholic Church. I found about these little things called encyclicals written by Holy Fathers instructing us on the various aspects of the faith, but in this case, marriage. And after two days of solid reading, I called Julie into the room. I said, look, I want to share with you what our church has to teach about marriage. Look at this stuff. And so I spent about 30 minutes or so overviewing with her for my notes the things that I was finding. However, what I was finding in her is that she was just as blown away as I was. In fact, she turned to me, she said, wow, this stuff is incredible. What do we do? And instinctively, I responded with, I think we need to pray or something, because after 10 years of marriage, two beautiful kids, two awesome jobs, the house, the boats, the trips, out of all those things, we had never humbled ourselves and went to our father in prayer. So I took Julie by the hand, got on her knees, and I recited a simple prayer that went like, Father, we tried living our marriage based upon the things we should do, and it doesn't work. We've also tried living by the ways of the world, and as you know, those things too do not work. Father, more than anything in the world, right here, right now, we sincerely invite you into our lives to show us how you want us to live marriage. And if you deliver us from this evil, we will commit the rest of our lives working in some kind of marriage or family ministry. And you know the old saying, be careful what you pray for, because we literally started experiencing what I call the grace of God, where we begin to see each other and our marriage in a different light. In fact, the very next week, we both went in and resigned from our corporate jobs because we knew the jobs were providing the money that a indulge in all those things that had taken us away from each other and now as we have come to understand that have taken us away from God as well. And so we knew those things had to go, but we just continued to work on the things that we were learning and people started approaching us wanting to know things about God's plan for marriage. And we started sharing those things. But but again in short that was the turnaround coming to understand that that there's a greater plan, a greater design for marriage. far greater than anything Julie and I ever could even conceive of it being. And as we begin to to become complicit with the author of marriage, therein lies the grace that allows for those things to be able to turn around, the the the hurts to be healed, the ability to truly forgive each other and to be able to move forward. And yeah, that that was the turnaround.

Dr. John Oberg [10:08]: I was trying leave space for Randy. I saw the I saw the gears turning, Randy. I've got more questions, but I see the So is there is there

Randy Lorensen [10:13]: John, I'm I'm just absorbing. It's fantastic.

Dr. John Oberg [10:16]: any like I think that's for people who are Catholic, that's an amazing story and it's easy to kind of grasp onto that. But like we have lots of listeners who aren't Catholic or Christian and they're they're I mean, the first question I'd ask in their shoes is, Well, then is there hope for me? Is that the only path forward? Like you've you've helped thousands of families since that that really dark moment. Any hope for someone who's not Christian or Catholic?

Greg Alexander [10:40]: a absolutely. a lot of people, well if you if you're not Catholic, if you're Christian, period, whether you're Protestant or Catholic alike, we still all serve the same God and it's still all the same truths. It's just coming to understand those truths. So in our work in the last 20, 26 years, specifically in the marriage disciples work, which is what we call our mentoring process, we work with couples across different faith traditions to include even individuals who have no faith. In fact, a a funny story was a couple that came to see us. And of course, I'm always inquiring about how did you hear about us? And this couple said, From the yellow pages. I said, No. I said, We don't have an ad in the yellow pages. He said, Well, that's where I found you. I said, But we do not have an ad in the yellow pages. And then I sit back and said, relax. I said, This is the way God allowed our paths across. And again, this couple they they were not believers at all. But again, some of the foundational principles are still the same. However, I I never skirt away from the issue that it is God's design, even if they're not. Not Christian, I still allow them to understand that fact. And as it has been, a hundred percent of couples that have come to us with no faith actually became believers. Not necessarily Catholic, but Christians. And that's the ultimate goal. You know, if we understand our walk as Christians, is to bring others to Christ and to extend that same love, care, and compassion to those who are not. And again, as St. Paul would say, I become all things to all people. And so when I encounter individuals that are not Catholic, are Christian per se, I don't beat them across the head with that. I still treat them with that same love and care and compassion. And I might add, it's not even a demand, if you will, that they become Christian. If they don't want to, that's fine too. I'm just here to help them find a way back together to experience the joy and happiness that we typically start out with in our marriage relationship that we hope to be until we take our last breath here on earth.

Anthony Marino [12:36]: I assume when people first come to you, they are they're di they're desiring to stay together. You know, they're it's maybe it's a last ditch effort and so forth. What what's the what's the process? What would it be like if I came if we came in together and said we've been struggling in our marriage and we're gonna want to get your advice and counsel on on working through, you know, this betrayal or just unhappiness or whatever. What's your what's the process that Alexander House employees to get the ball rolling, if you will.

Greg Alexander [13:10]: Yeah, I I like that you said that and how you prefaced the question if you wanted help, because that is the determining factor. You know, in the beginning, because of the troubled marriages and what it takes to work with couples who are experiencing difficulties, Julie vowed and and in fact prayed to God, Father, please send us the good couples, not the bad couples. But we realize all too soon it is the bad couples who want help the most, as opposed to the the relatively we're kinda in trouble couples, if you will. And so my preference is to receive the couples that are that are ready to to work because they they're a captive audience, if you will. That they show up to the appointments, they do the homework and things of that nature. However, when they come, the first thing I do, Anthony, is first I ask three questions. I call qualifying questions. And the first one is that, is this marriage relationship something you want? And are you willing to to do the things we'll ask of you to help get it to where it needs to be? Second question is do you have the trust, faith and belief in Jesus Christ that he has the power and authority to to heal your marriage? Because it's not just you, it's him. And then I cite a couple scriptur references where there's individuals where it clearly demonstrates that it was not just Christ's ability, but the faith of the individual who was in need of healing. And then, of course, the third question is and does God have your permission? And I always explain the fact that God is a perfect gentleman. He won't just just cast himself upon us in our lives or make us do anything. We have to extend that invitation. And so, Depending on on their responses will kind of determine how we we take that next step. But again, as as John spoke of, sometimes we have couples that they they're they're not believers. They they don't come with that. And and so I don't turn them away. It just allows me to know how I'm gonna approach them as we continue to work. Yes, again I let them know that. From a Christ-centered perspective, but this is the way it was intended to be. Which many of them will agree that, okay, yes, I I do believe that there's a God, and I do believe that that he created marriage. I said, Well, if we can get that far, man, that that's 90% of the battle. Now let's go back and see how he intended marriage to be in order for us to experience the joy and happiness. Because if we're encountering the difficulties, just maybe it's God's way of saying, you know what? Wake up, Greg and Julie. It's not about the job. It's not about the money. It's not about other people. It's about me. And if you bring me back into your relationship, and more importantly, if you live your marriage the way I intended it, just maybe things will be okay. And so that's kind of what I put forth the individuals because typically, for the most part, no one has ever tried it that way. They went out, they they've read all kind of books, they listened to Dr. Phil and Oprah and everybody else, except for God and what what he requires. And so that's what I attribute to our quote unquote success because we do indeed have a 98% success rate of couples that come to us that want to work that go through the full program, which consists of six sessions, what we call the six essential elements for strong marriage. And Anthony, they have to come and understand that God has a plan for marriage and now we live it out. There's a plan for chastity in marriage, how we should be able to approach intimacy in our marriage relationship. And then there's a forgiveness and healing section we do that helps them be able to forgive and not only forgive each other, but to take ownership of that in which I have brought into the marriage relationship that has has brought it down. Then we come back and allow them to understand what it means to be a servant spouse in a relationship. Much as I spoke of earlier, I thought marriage was all about me, but I came to understand it's about me dying to myself for the desires of my beloved, to which I've learned to throw in now that as long as what those desires are, if they're good, righteous, and more moral, then we should, with no exception, minister to those needs, as opposed to some of the crazy things we do ask of our spouse when we're not looking for that righteous perspective. Then we follow up with a piece on communication and then spirituality, not only talking about the spirituality that they should possess, but from a spiritual standpoint, the spiritual battle that is waged against our marriage relationship, because there are indeed evil entities that don't want us to be successful in that relationship. And I really do love it when we get the non-Christians or non-believers that come, because again, a lot of times this is information that they've never heard of. And so you're giving them a different perspective to view not only the marriage. relationship but but life itself and and so therefore they they become open. And I think our our personal testimony has a lot to do with it because by the time we're finished as we weave our story throughout the whole process that these couples start to look and say, wow if that couple can get through all of that that they've been through, maybe we have a chance. And so that that little testimony gives hope as well. And so find those couples, telling the story, giving them hope, laying out the process and and again for those who choose to accept and go through it, they they do come back together in the end.

Anthony Marino [18:10]: you when when when couples first come to you do you do you typically find that one or the other is kind of in and out? In other words, d the the is the husband sometimes being dragged into this or is the the wife being dragged into it by one or the other, or have have do you typically find that they've they've come like you say, they've gone to like other counselors, they've they've seen Dr. Phil and now they're they're both kind of They're both on board with trying this last thing. What's that dynamic like typically when they first come to you?

Greg Alexander [18:48]: Yeah, I'd say about 10% of the people we get down to Anthony, where you have one that's they're kind of on the fence and not really sure. And and to which I explained to her, I I understand that because you know the things that you have done thus far has allowed your marriage to be equivalent at. And sometimes there's a lot of hurt and pain that I I just don't have time to to go through these things, let alone to try to try to spend another five, ten, fifteen weeks of trying to make things better. I've I'm done. And so for those individuals, I I invite them, hey, just Just hang here with us. And especially after the the first section, we introduced the forgiveness and healing exercise. And again, 100% hands down, when we finish working with couples, and when I ask the question, what has been the most important thing you've got in our time together? And again, 100% of the time, it's always that forgiveness and healing exercise. Because we get couples, individuals within the couples, to stop pointing the fingers at the other person. You did this, you didn't do this, and we get them to point it back in the cell. I've done this, I failed to do this, I'm sorry for this. And and it becomes a game changer in a relationship because outside of that, too many times we're we're so involved and wanting to fault point the fault blame at the other person. And so And the other ninety percent of couples, they they do wanna work. They they've hit that rock bottom and they're looking at, hey, I just wanna know what do you have that can help us get back together because nobody stands at the altar, Anthony, in front of God, family and friends professing this eternal love. with the intention that, you know what, we're gonna do this for maybe ten to fifteen years, and then we're gonna get a divorce, and then we're gonna find somebody else and we're gonna do it all over again. We stand there on that day because it is our intention for this to be to death do its part. But nobody prepares us for life and everything that life has to throw at us. And for some people it just becomes difficult to to get through those things, especially when you're not equipped with how to handle those things. And so I'd like to say that in that time when they spend with us, we not only allow them intellectually to know this is what marriage looks like, but we give them the practical things to do in each one of those sessions that equips them with what they need to know to go back and engage and do the things they need to do in order to receive a joyful marriage.

Randy Lorensen [21:07]: You mentioned your blueprint and are most couples missing one thing. Like you mentioned the forgiveness is the big thing. Is that what the biggest thing you think most couples are missing? Is it the servant? Is it or is it all over the board?

Greg Alexander [21:23]: D. All of the above. Yeah, th there's those different elements and and I mean, even when you whittle it down, Randy, to something as simple as communication. You know, with two different people, as in my case with my wife, two different races, sometimes two different faiths, you have all these differences. Plus you come from different family of origins. And your style of communication is what it was in that family of origin. The problem is is when we come together, we got two different styles and we're trying to do it two different ways. So we go back and we get them to kind of shed all that stuff that they've ever learned, but we're gonna start over. With three simple things in communication, honesty, charity, and empathy. Honesty, always allowing a platform to exist where one or the other can come to the table and say, this is what I think, this is what I feel, this is what I need, this is whatever. But again, that freedom to express. Because a lot of times what happens is that we grow up in such this defensive culture, this competitive culture, that the minute that my spouse begins to say something that I perceive to be a negative, I'm not listening. Not only do I stop listening, But now I'm starting to formulate a rebuttal to come back and to refute what they're accusing me of in the first place. But again, we teach them you want the honesty to be there, especially in those difficult things. Because if we don't allow those things to surface, we can never address them and put them to rest. And I always say that Satan loves when we put it in the closet and keep it in the dark because it grows and festers and becomes something else totally different than what it was originally, and we we're all over the place. And so giving your spouse that freedom. to come to the table to be honest and and say this is how I feel. And and when they're speaking, there's two ways to listen. We can listen to defend or listen to respond. Again in this culture we grow up we're listening and we're defending. We're trying to justify why we do, how I did it and everything else. When in fact we should listen and respond. And the very moment that we hear that there's something that is hurtful or painful that my beloved has experienced, especially as a result of my actions, we should want to remove that. Because if we really understand this whole understanding of the two becoming one as it is supposed to be in marriage, that oneness should be so intimately woven that when Julia's hurting, I should be hurting. And again, if she is expressing a hurt that she's experiencing as a result of my actions, my only recourse should be to take that away. And and so I reach in, I ask for forgiveness, she extends forgiveness. And part of that forgiveness process is that now that I know that this causes you hurt and pain, I'm gonna stop doing it. I mean It becomes intentional if you if we repetitively repeat those those different actions, if you will, that allows for the hurt and pain to be there. So we have to turn away once we come to realize or know that it's something that our spouse is offended by. And then it's speaking in charity. If we always remember to speak in that warm and loving way. Things don't have to escalate. They don't have to get nasty. It's just speaking in a tone that that it invites conversation as opposed to repelling conversation. And but as couples come back and do these things, it it it just works. It works because it's the way God intended. And we do it in those ways, it works in addition to the fact we receive his grace for no other reason than the fact that I'm doing it his way. And it just makes it easier. So I've I've grown to the point I I even welcome the most difficult couples

Anthony Marino [24:49]: Yeah.

Greg Alexander [24:50]: who come in in the most horrendous situations because in their minds that there's no way. There's no hope. And a lot of times the couples we get now, they'll come in with that statement, you know, I hope you're good because you're our last hope. Jesus Christ is your last hope. I'm just an instrument he will use to get you there. It'll be your decision to determine whether you want to take those steps or not. So it's not about me, brother. It's about you and what you want to do.

Randy Lorensen [25:16]: Love the I love the system and this aligns really well with John's one of John's superpowers is to be able to go in and look at something and use best practices, right? And and take a system. And I'm just thinking about it. You know, most people don't really have a model when it comes to this, or they do. I I shouldn't say they do, right? It's their parents or their family or the community they grew up in, the people down the street, or you know, probably worse yet, it's something off of TV or, you know, God forbid social media. Right. So I like that there's just a model that people can follow of success. And I it just occurs to me, I think very few people have that. I mean, is that accurate or am I that just me? Yeah.

Greg Alexander [25:58]: You you you yeah, I th I think you spot on Randy. You know, again, as I mentioned earlier. Even with for my wife, now her her parents are what I would consider to be the the second holy family. I mean, just a beautiful couple. My father-in-law passed three years ago, but but they just demonstrated this this awesome marriage relationship. The sad part is that they never told the kids how to have this, you know, and they just expected them to witness it and and to learn it. Furthermore, my wife and and I think as many of us do, when we realize that we're not that great and wonderful. How can I ever live that out? Why should I even aspire to that because I'm not capable? So it it became a detriment in addition to the fact she never saw her parents argue. And it's not to say that they never did. They probably just do it didn't do it in front of the kids. And so my wife and her siblings just thought, my parents is perfect people. They don't mess up. They don't even argue. And so it gave them a false sense of understanding. And to which I tell the couples now that we work with, don't shield your problem and issues from your kids. Allow them to know that you're struggling. importantly employ their prayers and asking them to pray for the success of your marriage relationship. Because when you reconcile, you're going to give them the biggest lesson that they've ever learned that that in marriage you can indeed experience difficulties, troubled times. But that doesn't mean that you throw in the tile and you go and you find your way to the divorce attorney. You stick in, you remain steadfast and you come back and again in our case bring God front and center in your marriage and you too can experience that that redemption. As many times as I I try to get couples to to understand, God, given the fact that He's this omnipotent, all-knowing God. He knew exactly what Greg and Julie had to experience in order to shake their tree and to wake them up. So he allows it to happen. So those bad times that he allows to happen, it's not his way of punishing us. Again, it's his way of bringing us back to him. And for those who who realize it and see it as such and come back and do these simple things, they they experience that. And I think one of the greatest compliments we've ever had was from a couple who came and expressed that said, wow, we've been in counseling for the last year. And in just four short sessions, we learn more about each other and more about our marriage. in in just four so s short sessions. He said, I don't mean to insult you guys. He said, but what you have is simple. I said, it's not an insult at all. I said, God works in the simplicity. It only becomes complicated when we start to put our own selves into the equation. And so it is doing those simple things that allows for these major transformations to take place. And and then I could sit here all day long and give you story after story of couples who come in who who experienced those transformations and have gone on. that not only have better marriages, but actually have even gotten involved in in ministerial work. You know, currently we have 28 other couples trained in our process around the nation. And more than half of those couples are couples that came to us who marriage were in trouble. And because of what they received, now they want to give back. So they're serving in that capacity, helping other couples as well.

Anthony Marino [29:04]: So how have things changed? 1997, pretty different universe, versus 2026. You know, in terms of are you employing any technology? Are there are are are the problems the same, different, more complex? You know, we now we have social media, we got gosh knows what's going on in people's lives today versus versus then. Are you seeing Any changes with younger couples and so what's how how how have things evolved? Kind of give us a history lesson.

Greg Alexander [29:36]: right. And Anthony, you just took me all over the place. There's so many things. First, a lot of the things are the same. pornography is one that has has just gone off the charts because it's so readily accessible. It's right there in the palm of our hands at a click of a button. It's not just the men anymore. We get just as many women who are engaging in pornography. infidelity as well, just as many women now. As it used to be men, because now women are in the workplace, they're doing these work trips, they're having these work husbands, if you will. And so, yeah, dynamics have changed all over the place. But I think social media has been a huge detriment to the marriage relationship. Both in things like Facebook, where we have many couples where the man or woman have gone back and reconnected with an old high school sweetheart, or it's a social media in the various dating apps. You you would be amazed at how many married couples have profiles. files on on the various dating apps that are out there as well. And so in fact there's a few apps now that you can actually log on to to see if your spouse is on some of those dating apps. And it's it's amazing. So it it's it's all over the place. But the beautiful thing, the solution, the resolution is is all the same. It's coming back to those those six essential elements if you will. And and I don't want you guys to go away from here today to think that that I'm this great genius who created this great process because it it didn't come from me. As I mentioned earlier, we quit our jobs. And my deal with God was that if I continue to read and study, that He would allow us to be able to engage in some kind of work that was going to derive some kind of revenue to keep the lights on, so to speak. And so every day I'd have my scripture and my stack of things to study, and I'll start with a quick prayer. Father, send me the Holy Spirit to reveal to me what it is that you want me to know as I study today. And after a period of time, the Holy Spirit started downloading these now these six essentials. Elements that we have begun to employ in our marriage allowed for a transformation that then we felt called to create an entity, an organization to help other couples come to this understanding as well. And a beautiful thing too I think is worth mentioning is that we don't charge for our services. And whether it takes six session or twenty session, it doesn't matter. here once we start the process we're here until you guys are able to to be there to minister to each other if you will to be each other's coaches and and that's been a beautiful thing is that we have a a bunch of donors who can just know and love what we do John, yours truly, who's one of those supporters that has allowed us to be in that position to make this available to couples. And and I I I'm getting the the the chills right now just thinking about it because you know we don't discuss that up front. And and at some point in time, the couple say, Okay, how much is this costing? I'm like, nothing. And I always get that same response, Well, nothing in the world is free. I say, you know what? It's not totally free. The way you're gonna pay me back is for you guys to come back together and go forward to have this happy, joyful marriage relationship. Because I got kids and I got grandkids that are growing up in this world. And the more couples that we can have that's gonna create some good, happy individuals, the better this world is gonna be. I said, So you're right, it is gonna cost you, but not not financially, not my

Anthony Marino [32:54]: Do you do any kind of ministry help ever have you know life changes in people's existence? You know, the kids are grown, they're out of the house and all of a sudden we're sitting at home and it's just us after you know 20 odd years. It's almost like do you work with people on a like an intervention basis to help them get through that? Because that is a difficult time. I think your kids are probably older now and out of the house, given they were seven and nine back in ninety-seven. Do you help people with that?

Greg Alexander [33:28]: yeah, yes, we do. In fact, I'm working with a couple right now in Denver, Colorado, that are empty nesters. You know, and and unfortunately, many times, and nobody tells us this either. We spend our whole 18, 20 years of those children's lives inundated with their life, the sports, the academic activities, and all those different things. And so when they grow up and leave the house, then we sit back, it's like, Who the heck are you? Because so much time, energy, and effort has been invested in those kids. In fact, I'm actually working on an online course right now for emptiness is for that particular reason because that's another thing nobody ever tells you about that you should be preparing for the for those days because there are different dynamics that you have to contend with at that point in time. Even as I say that, there's no one that even suggests that you need that continuing education. You know, you look at many of the other professions and vocations in in our culture, you know, whether you're a teacher, an attorney, a doctor, a priest even, there's always some kind of continuing education. And not just to go and just check the box, because there are things that you can continue to learn that's going to make you proficient in your job. But the one job that we're called to live to death do us part, we act like once we say I do, there's nothing else we need to do. And so we need to be doing continuing education for that point as well. Because as we transition into those various ages and stages of the marriage life cycle, there's different dynamics that we need to contend with, starting with that first child that comes up until the last child that leaves. Every age and stage has different dynamics. So we should always be consulting or seeking out some kind of continued education. put us in a position to to deal with that. But I also want to go to a second point that you mentioned as well, Anthony, because those kids were seven and nine at the time. And actually at that time, I had undergone a vasectomy when I was in the United States Army. And so as we're coming back and experiencing this awakening in our faith, I was like, my goodness, I robbed God's ability to be to determine in my life whether I should have any more kids or not. So I actually went back and reversed that procedure. So we had another five kids post-reversal. So my my

Anthony Marino [35:36]: Wow.

Greg Alexander [35:36]: oldest child is 38, my youngest is 15. So I'm I'm I'm still I'm not an empty nester yet, put it that way.

Anthony Marino [35:42]: Okay.

Randy Lorensen [35:43]: Mm-hmm. Didn't

Dr. John Oberg [35:46]: Yes, that's it mean you mentioned that I I've donated to the Alexander House. I think it's a great ministry and you know, I I think that marriage is an institution that is good for society for a whole lot of reasons. We've talked about how it can build abundance and do all the things that it does. One of the things I don't hear being talked about enough is this kind of the gray divorce, I think is what the with the or the gray wave that's being happening where people are getting to be you know, older in their lives and deeper, deeper, deeper into marriage and divorcing. And you see it's happening, you know, around the time of menopause there seems to be a lot of information coming out about how that impacts marriage and there not a whole lot of information about it. Not a whole lot of information about growing older into marriage is is we're having you know longer and longer marriages in this kind of new paradigm of work over the last 30, 40, 50 years that we don't have 20,000 years of history that people study about. So when you think about people that are deeper into their marriages and ways they can proactively get ahead of this, kind of back to Randy's point. And you said you're doing some things this group in Denver is that still coming from this the point of like there's a problem or are Are you now moving into the place where it's like, hey, here are the proactive things you can do where there is not a problem and you don't want to see one?

Greg Alexander [37:01]: Yeah, we we we do that very cautiously, John, because and and I always say from a preventative standpoint, because there's so many areas in which we can work. And and in our our days of old, early days of Alexander House, we were that that couple, that organization. you're in trouble, let me jump in and help. you need enrichment? I can do that too. you need marriage preparation? Let's do that also. And we were all over the place. And and about ten years ago, I very clearly heard God saying, I called you and I want you working with Trump. troubled marriages. So so a large part of our time is with those troubled marriages. But I do find those situations on occasion where we can step in from a preventative standpoint. And what we've elected to do now is to create those additional courses that they can actually go through online. And if need be call give us a call. We'll we'll always be there to to help anyone who who's asking for help. But it doesn't take us away from from the main couples or the ones that are in trouble. And and as you kind of alluded to then there's so much fallout. In our society as a result of couples divorcing. You know, first of all, the couples themselves think that, you know, this is just between me and you. But if you have kids, the kids are impacted. usually juvenile delinquency, drugs, sex, those are kind of the top three areas that they start to to navigate to because they don't have the love at home from So they're seeking love for somewhere else, or they're trying to find a way to none to suffer from the from the pains of mom and dad's divorce. And then you have co-workers, then you have friends, and you know, now we divorced, and I was friends with him, and I can't be with her because she's with this other guy, so we're just not gonna be friends at all. Then you have a lot of times the women who were stay-at-home moms. Now they're left, haven't never worked before. Many of them have to go in government assistance that all of us are paying for to help subsidize their lives, because we don't think it. involves us when it when in fact it does. And as I spoke of earlier, we all live in this world. And so if we're not gonna care about our neighbors next door in their marriage relationship and the fallout that their kids can experience and the things that they can get into, you don't think when the the the violence and and all those other things start to happen that's inflicted upon us and other people in our society that it doesn't affect us. It affects everybody. You know that there was a a pope who who is now has been ordained a saint. John Paul the Great, and he made an infamous statement. He said, As the family goes, so goes this nation, and so goes the world in which we live. So if we want better world, want a better nation, even want better communities, it behooves us to go back and not only just focus on the family, but let's go all the way back to the very unit that begets the family, which is the marriage relationship. And I'm sorry, we as a society, as a culture, we do not spend enough time in that area. Even in our church, I'm ashamed to say, we don't spend enough time in that that that formation stage, even long before the couples are even considering getting married, way back in the dating phase. Because a lot of times it's those bad habits in the dating phase that they bring forth in the marriage relationship. So if you're running around and you're sleeping with, you know, every time Dick and Harry, which in the the culture today they call body counts, what's your body body count? And the higher your body count, you know, the the better you are, the better lover you are. You have all these experiences. Well, who in the world wants to marry someone when you slept with a hundred other guys before me? I don't know. and and of course it's the things we don't want in our marriage, but we're not thinking about that in our younger young adult years when we're all trying to do just that. And so there there's so many so many battles to be fought on so many fronts that it'll take us all a lifetime to really get it all together, but we have to start somewhere. So we felt called to start with those troubled marriages so that we can get mom and dad back on track so that at least from their homes they could start now passing on these attitudes and these behaviors to their children. And again and they become that perfect witness. I have a daughter who She's been ten ten years married now, but several years ago was experiencing difficulties. And and I heard this as she was being interviewed on a radio station and she was talking very openly as we do about the troubles in her marriage. But how they persevered and and gotten better. And so the guy interviewing her said, my goodness, that's an incredible story. He said, Good, but can I ask you, where did where did you learn that stick to it to this? She said, Are you kidding me? You don't know about my parents. She said, after what they went through and they got through and what I was going through, it it was nothing. I knew we had a chance. And so again, it it's that witness, whether it's it's to the community at large or or right there in our very own home sometimes, that we are those witnesses as to what it should look like. You know, and and even when we didn't know in the beginning, it doesn't mean that we can't turn that ship around and write it and show them the right way. And again, it becomes a learning lesson. So I have a lot of friends now who are lamenting about their kids falling away from the church and not having their faith anymore. And and I don't have that problem because my kids know what life is like when God is not apart. I mean, ever since they had a level of understanding and as they got older, as they became age appropriate, we we shared more of our life. And and not because I wanna Just give them a bunch of trash about our lives, but I want to keep them out of harm's way. Guys, if this mom and I were there. You know, I had a a son. Every day every time he was talking about his future, he was so focused on what he was gonna do and how much money he was gonna make. I'm like, son, it's it's not about the money. I said, that was the path your mom and I were on, you know, if you haven't read the book. And surprisingly enough, I think out of out of the seven kids, we only have one that has read the book from cover to cover. I think the rest don't wanna see what's in there. But again, we're we're very open and very candid about what can happen if you don't do it this way. And and and more importantly, we've given them the point of reference. And there are times in which we we do fall off, we do go But they know where I need to go back to because it has been planted. I think there's a scripture verse that talks about that in the book of Psalms. You know, when they're young, train them in his ways, and when they grow old, they won't stray from it. To which I've added, and even if they stray from it, they know where to come back to.

Dr. John Oberg [43:18]: That's great. Well, as you wrap up here, a couple quick

Anthony Marino [43:19]: Inspiring me.

Dr. John Oberg [43:20]: questions. If I want to find the book that you and Julie wrote, Marriage 911, available on Amazon. you can find it any place that they sell good books. And then how does someone find Alexander House? If they're interested in, you know, finding you or making you aware when, you know, i they have a friend who needs to talk to you. It's never to them, right? It's always a friend who who needs you.

Greg Alexander [43:41]: You're right.

Dr. John Oberg [43:42]: So how does someone find Alexander House?

Greg Alexander [43:46]: great question, John. You simply go to the Alexander House website. That's WW. I can say that real fast, Five John. W the t-h e alexanderhouse.org. The alexanderhouse.org. And it kind of serves as a signpost to you about the organization itself, some of the things we do, but more importantly, if you're experiencing difficulties, it will point you to our marriage disciples site, which is marriage disciples.org. And we have a beautiful female, Robin Zamora, who who directs that that program for us. Has been with us 15 years now and just does an incredible job. She will well receive you, she will take care of you. Even if you don't work with us, or if you have a spouse that don't want to work, which is another thing, we only work when both both couples in the party want to work, or both couples, both individuals within the couple wants to work. because we've we learned early on it's it's a waste of time. We can give you the best of the best, but if you're not singing from the same sheet of music, there's still gonna be difficulties, which I don't know how they do it in traditional therapy when you're working with one and not the other. for us it was disastrous. So yeah, we choose to do it with the couples. But you know, those two websites, finding Robin, and she and she will take care of you and she will get you to the appropriate couple that will be able to serve you because in the couples we have, we specifically look for couples whose marriages have been in trouble for those different situations. So when we received a hurting couple that comes to us, Robin appropriately matches them with someone that's walked in those shoes. So they're not sitting from across from the table or the computer screen with someone that that can't relate. They they can always relate to what you're going through, which also helps the healing process expeditiously.

Dr. John Oberg [45:26]: That's great. Well thanks for being here.

Randy Lorensen [45:26]: Fantastic. Yeah, and we'll put that we'll put those links in the show notes as well. That's fantastic, right?

Greg Alexander [45:32]: Well thank you guys. Thank thank you again. Thank you.

Dr. John Oberg [45:34]: Greg, as always,

Anthony Marino [45:34]: Really appreciate

Dr. John Oberg [45:35]: s s it's

Anthony Marino [45:35]: it.

Dr. John Oberg [45:36]: just such a such a great honor to have you here and keep doing that great work. We're just you know, always supportive in our household to yours. So thank you.

Greg Alexander [45:44]: Well well thank you, John. And thank you for what you guys do and making this platform available. I'm sure I'm just one of many who has been on your your show to to kind of speak about their experiences, their lives, and to be able to give someone hope. And and again, without that hope, and there's lot of people who just just cash it in, sometimes cash in their lives because they they haven't heard a a story of that hope. So again, thank you guys for what you're doing. this I think it's awesome. I really appreciate it.

Randy Lorensen [46:10]: Thank you, Greg.

Dr. John Oberg [46:11]: All right, listeners,

Anthony Marino [46:11]: Really good.

Dr. John Oberg [46:12]: stick around. We'll be back after the break and we're gonna talk to you about what's happening in the world that's causing abundance. There's a lot of it happening, it's fast and furious. Come right back after the break.

Dr. John Oberg [47:20]: All right, welcome back from the break. Randy, Bitcoin is making news again in a way that is really interesting to people who aren't just Bitcoiners.

Randy Lorensen [47:28]: Well, yeah, I mean the Fed raised rates last week, and I think what we're seeing around the world, it by the way, it's not just our Fed. Europe has raised rates, Japan's raised rates, and historically the US and Japan go different directions. They are not Europe and the US tend to be tied together. The US and Japan do not tend to move in unison. And everybody's raising rates and debt is going up. And I think there's more and more people that are becoming aware that the system is broken. We can't pay back forty forty trillion in debt. But the good news is there's Bitcoin and it's a way for people to protect each other. And what's been happening for the last few years in Bitcoin, a lot of it for its the first years, it was it was these crazy cyberpunks, and then it was libertarians, and then it was hard money people and Austrian economists. And that's a s each of those are a small little segment of society, but they built it to a trillion dollar asset. What I'm seeing now is it's Wall Street, it's billionaires. When you hear billionaires talking about it, it used to be, if you go back four or five years, there were almost zero percent of them that owned Bitcoin. Now the majority of them own Bitcoin and there are at least a percentage of their wealth to protect it. And you're seeing more and more from Wall Street and hedge funds, and the big real money is coming in. And I'm I like the other group better, frankly, but That is what's going to take it to the next level. And that's people that are saying, hey, this money thing is broken. You can't just print all of this. And I want to buy something scarce. 21 million of them will ever exist. Nobody can make more of it. And I want to protect my wealth for generations. And for some of them, it's diversification. For some of them, it's an upside. But it's rich people in Wall Street trying to protect their wealth in the scarcest asset the world's ever known.

Dr. John Oberg [49:25]: Yeah, as if this recording okay

Anthony Marino [49:25]: Riddy, I I've got a real question here on on what all this what all this means. So there's there's 21 billion coins, right? That's all that they're

Randy Lorensen [49:34]: Millions.

Anthony Marino [49:35]: out the the million million coins. So let's just, you know, gameplay this. So if I put you know, I have 10% of my my portfolio in Bitcoin. I'm a typical investor. But my understanding is most people Don't sell their Bitcoin. They they they buy it, they put it in their portfolio, and it stays there. So what you know, what happens if the end doesn't happen? In other words, that we do we do grow our way out of this debt and we're able, we're able to pay our, you know, they somehow magically Congress, you know, gets a fines guard and and stops spending. You know, money like crazy. What I I know, I know that's not

Randy Lorensen [50:24]: you're so adorable.

Anthony Marino [50:27]: a likely thing, but it seems to me to just be something that would sit there. And what I'm driving at, it's not gonna grow in value if no one ever sells it, because there's no demand for it.

Randy Lorensen [50:38]: the opposite. Scarcity. If no one ever sells it, there's no supply, that forces the price up. If people are selling, there's more there's more supply than demand. If more people are selling, that takes the price down. The best thing that can do for the price is nobody sells it. Does that make sense?

Anthony Marino [50:57]: I know it makes sense from a supply and demand standpoint, but if no one is selling, literally if literally no one is selling, then there are no buyers.

Dr. John Oberg [51:04]: Well, hold on. What now if if we're if we're at if we're at literal ends, we're zero and zero, now we're kind of at always and never. Like that's just at some point we can't talk about situations that aren't gonna happen. Like what happens to the price of Bitcoin if the sun doesn't come up tomorrow? You've heard me have this argument lots of times. There's always gonna be some people selling some. There's always gonna be lots of people who wanna buy it. And the question is, are there more or less people that wanna buy it than are selling it?

Randy Lorensen [51:29]: But Anthony, there's psychos like me, and I know hundreds of these people, and there's thousands, millions of them in the world. I buy every day. I'm adding Bitcoin, adding Bitcoin, adding Bitcoin. I've never sold any. Okay. I've sold other assets. I've got a stock right now that I'm looking to sell to probably get more Bitcoin, as if I need more, but I just think it's got a better upside. So There's people like me that are always going to be buying because I I really believe this is the fight for the world. And this is where we talk about abundance. If people really want to protect themselves and their their worth going forward, this is the best vehicle for that, in my opinion. Okay. I shouldn't give the disclaimer, not investment advice, blah, blah, blah, all that good stuff. But this is the battle. That we're fighting. And it's this fiat money. I mean, we don't have time for me to go into all the ills of fiat money and the broken system and the math. But look, it's over. I mean, I'm I'm I'm done saying it's not. It it when we write history and we look back when they say when this fiat, this crazy fiat experiment ended, that date is gonna be before we record this on Monday 921 of 26. That date will be before this. I think it's gonna go back to 08. We just don't know it. But when the history books write it, they're gonna say this is where the debt became insurmountable and they couldn't pay it back. And that's we've got thousands of examples of this throughout history. It always ends the same way. One way or another, they print the money, they deflate, they write off the the they just make the currency worthless, and it's been to different degrees, right? I mean, everybody knows the Nazi Germany. More recently, it's Zimbabwe, Argentina, Venezuela, Turkey, blah, blah, blah. I mean, there's there's a whole bunch that are happening now. It's Japan is pretty out of control. There's a lot of things. Israel in the 80s is the best example, and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to thread the needle where it just goes to really mass hyperinflation for a short period of time, like Israel did. That's the dream. And they lost most of their purchasing power in a in a decade. So

Dr. John Oberg [53:43]: So check out Randy's book Demystifying Money if you want more on this. It's a great read for understanding some of this stuff. And then Randy, I think maybe it's time for us to have another full episode topic on money supply and what's happening. I think it's a great way to protect abundance as we go.

Randy Lorensen [53:58]: Yeah. So all right, let's go to the next topic. What do we got next, John?

Dr. John Oberg [54:01]: Let's turn let's turn ener energy's next. So I think we've got a couple of things in energy happening. you know, Indian farmers earning money from the sun, tiny lasers reducing energy needs. Like somebody pick up the baton and run with here.

Randy Lorensen [54:14]: Go ahead, Anthony.

Anthony Marino [54:14]: Makes so much sense. You know, it it it's it's almost like, duh, why haven't why aren't American farmers doing this? I mean, they have they you know, they now have portable solar arrays. And you know, Randy grew up on a farm and he can talk about rotating crops and they can actually move these things from, you know, one acre to another acre if they have to. It just seems like, you know, I guess I guess you have to live in desperation before you do something really intelligent. And so these Indian farmers are really struggling. And you know, they figured out a way to help, you know, keep keep an income stream coming. So they're selling electricity back to the grid by using their excess land to put out solar arrays. It's just a it's a no brainer and it's just stunning that we haven't done more.

Dr. John Oberg [55:05]: I love it.

Randy Lorensen [55:06]: Yeah, I mean innovation, right? I mean a lot of this stuff comes out of desperation. So, I mean

Dr. John Oberg [55:13]: Now on the flip side, we Randy, so that's like, you know, you can move solar rays around while you're rotating crops, but on the flip side of this, there's researchers working on tiny little lasers that'll move information faster to use less energy. So we harness more energy on the one side, then we use less energy for compute on the other side. Like people are now starting to recogni and I think you know, someone this week said that I think it was Jensen Wong of NVIDIA talked about like the amount of compute in the entire world was being held by two or three companies, and we've got to actually start to work for ways a and so one One of ways to do that is to make energy more more democratized and and tiny las tiny lasers seem to be one more way we're doing that.

Randy Lorensen [55:53]: Yeah, I mean if if AI is going to save us, right? If it's going to cure cancer, take us to space, give us new materials, all the great things that we hope AI can do, right? And I know there's a lot of doomerism right now, and all these things are like it's good, you know, it could kill us. Well, it can also advance humanity in unbelievable ways. It needs resources. And right now the choke points, Elon Musk talks about this all the time, and amongst other people, but it's energy and it's chips or compute. And we have a massive shortage of both right now. we have a massive shortage of energy. China has a bigger shortage of chips, but both neither one of us have enough. So one of the ways is to create more energy, but the other thing is to make this more energy efficient simultaneously so we can build data centers and make them more efficient. And we're tackling the problem in an exponential way. So I think I think anything that's working on this, I'm like, yes, yes, yes. Let's see what works. That works great and this works great. Let's do both of them and let's put them together and create the exponentials.

Dr. John Oberg [56:57]: Well ta take us one step further into that Doomerism comment too, because there are people that are you know, that are like, Hey, you know, it's the Skynet's coming and the the the machines are gonna kill us and I I heard over the weekend somebody talking about that as like people that are trying to get their own message heard about something and they're really kind of driving that and and this doomerism is spiked up again, but there's there's a flip side to that if you're being even handed about the opportunities being created, right?

Randy Lorensen [57:20]: Yeah, I I actually heard an interview the other day with a guy, I can't remember his name, but he is like a coach that is hired by open AI. And he works with all kinds of people there, right? And he wasn't using specific names, but he was talking about how there's people at OpenAI that think there's a 10 or 20% chance it could kill us, and there's other people there that are like, this is going to save us. And there's people on both ends of the spectrum, and there's people in the middle. And he said that that is almost a hundred percent based on their beliefs. How they were how they were raised growing up, what their parents told them, and it's almost a hundred percent that. I have a different take on this. So I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think a lot about the game theory that I just don't think most people think about consequences. Well, if we're worrying about it killing ourselves, what we're really doing is we're imposing human beliefs and values on the AI. Why do humans kill each other, right? They're fighting over scarce resources, it's pride, it's sex, it's power, it's it's something that is scarce that they are fighting over. If whether it's land, power, sex, whatever, right? That that's why humans go to war. Maybe it's we want your gold, your salt, your land, your waterway. AI doesn't have these same desires. It's logical to me that AI has a much lower chance of killing us than humans do. Now, AI in the hands of the wrong humans is a problem, but so is a biological weapon or a nuclear weapon or fire or you know any number of things, right? So I actually, the more I've thought about this, I think the chances of AI killing us is less than people think because AI has different motivations, different goals. Also, if humans are constantly fighting over scarce things, one of the promises of AI is that it gives us abundance. All of a sudden if you don't have water, If it can create ways to get water from the sun, as we've talked about, and make solar and all these things more efficient, or we don't have this, we don't have that, it makes food plentiful, and it creates abundance, even the humans running it have less incentive to go kill other humans. So I actually believe the game theory, the more I think about it, is less likely that it kills us than almost any technology that I can think of in the past. I think the nuclear bomb had a much higher chance of killing us all than AI does. And in fact, it could help. save us from some of those types of things. So

Anthony Marino [59:49]: I just think the doomer

Dr. John Oberg [59:49]: Nice.

Anthony Marino [59:50]: the doomers are using it, you know, from a political perspective. It's almost like the a religious thing where here it you know, you you must believe in God or the rapture, you know, you'll burn in hell and so on and so forth. So the the the politicians and other people are using Doomerism to gin up interest and control and scare people into doing whatever they need whatever these people want them to do. In this in this case and at this time it's a It's a voting situation. I just think they're using it for their own devices, which is really, really sad to me. And I agree with Randy. There's gonna be a lot more good that comes out of all of this eventually. whether it's us doing it, someone in Europe, France, China, India, wherever else, the the where there aren't doomers, or the same type of doomers anyway. so long term it's gonna be really good for us. Right now we're in a very strange political time here in the United States, that's I think a big part of what's going on here. Self interest.

Dr. John Oberg [1:00:54]: I mean the tough part is th there's gotta be some security s and I'm I'm not talking about regulation, but there's gotta be some thought about security and how we do this well. And you know, Jensen Wong again had an interesting take when he said, you know, w when the capitalist is rational and takes on those you know, responsibilities themselves, they'll they'll act in their own best financial interest. And so if we kind of place the incentives, Randy, you say this all the time, follow the money. Right. And so I think if we put the right financial incentives in place, we're gonna see a lot of that stuff work itself out. And someone was even talking about like, you know, slowing down the frontier might be economically better. Now I think there's some geopolitical danger in that that needs to be addressed as well. But at the end of the day, you know, I think th the the Anytime we look too far on the polls, Dumerism or Optimism, I think th the truth is generally somewhere in the middle, so

Randy Lorensen [1:01:42]: Yeah. The incentive,

Anthony Marino [1:01:42]: Agree.

Randy Lorensen [1:01:43]: by the way, for anthropic or chat GPT is if they are really some of these new models, I mean, like Astra Six and they're supposedly a newer model of of Claude that hasn't been out, it's so good right now. There is at some point where it is have got they've got recursive self learning. If they could create a sandbox, they basically could control the economy. Like that's actually the scarier thing to me, is they get what they want and they get They get it because that takes away all of the competition. And

Dr. John Oberg [1:02:15]: Yeah. That's what yeah.

Randy Lorensen [1:02:16]: the open source models are not that far behind. So it's idiotic. It's not gonna work. And give me one example of where the government regulation made something better, more efficient, cheaper, faster, but what it never works. Well, yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [1:02:28]: Well for for who, right? Right. For who so 'cause if I can get if I can get you to regulate in in my industry when I've already won, like that's a great win for me. Like then the government fights my battles for sure.

Randy Lorensen [1:02:36]: Right. But it but what they're really pushing for is OpenAI, Anthropic, X and Google are the four players allowed, and they are the four like the amount of power that gives them and the ability for them to disrupt industries would be it would be unbelievable. We need competition. We need small open source decentralized models. You know, that people can run on their own machine. Like we need we need a democratization of AI systems that are better, faster, cheaper, et cetera.

Dr. John Oberg [1:03:14]: Interestingly, I just saw an ad on social media today that said we'll pay you a hundred thousand to two million dollars for your mature business models so that we can train our frontier model on that. And I just thought how scary that is. Like, let me just give you my best practices and watch you destroy my own company for two million bucks like that. Woo, anyway. Okay, last one on the list today, the grandparent effect. It looks like longevity is now being tied to the reduction of infant mortality first 30 days of life. And so what this means is the things that I do with my body for longevity have some type of correlation to not just my kids, my kids' kids, but my kids' kids' kids mortality rate when they're born. Like so my grandchildren's children mortality rate impacted by my longevity. What do you guys think?

Randy Lorensen [1:04:02]: Fascinating? I d I don't have an opinion on this other than it's fascinating.

Dr. John Oberg [1:04:06]: I mean it now it's like what what I do to my own body actually matters for other people's bodies, maybe.

Randy Lorensen [1:04:14]: Gotta change some sayings around.

Dr. John Oberg [1:04:19]: I just think it's something cool to watch. Nature Communications had an ar an August article, something for you to pay attention to. looks like, you know, half the infant mortality first 30 days for the next four generations based on longevity. So evidently what we do does matter long after we're gone. So that's it for

Anthony Marino [1:04:35]: Well you w you know you are a product you are a product of your environment, you know. So the environment that your children grow up in and the environment that those child their children's children grow up in, you know, are you know, it's obviously gonna have an effect. So the the healthier, the the more social, the happier they are, that's gonna pass down. So makes sense.

Dr. John Oberg [1:04:54]: Yeah. I love it. Well we'll keep paying attention, Ran

Randy Lorensen [1:04:57]: Well yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [1:04:58]: go ahead, Randy, sorry.

Randy Lorensen [1:04:59]: the other thing I would say is, you know, I've heard before that the reason when people walk through the woods a lot of times they look up into the trees, especially in like jungle areas, is because they're they're and s and we do it here, but if our ancestors came from there, we do it because we were worried about, you know, big cats in the trees, snakes and dangerous things, even if those don't live, you know, I'm in Bastrop, Texas. So even if they don't live in Bastrop, Texas, if you know, people had that in the past or even in further in history, there were big birds that could swipe down and and eat you. So if that could be carried on generationally for hundreds, thousands of years, this actually makes sense to me now that I think about it.

Dr. John Oberg [1:05:40]: Fun one to watch. Keep keep watching the news. We'll we'll get more and more science with more and more AI. So I think we're gonna understand things hopefully better and better. So in maybe history won't repeat itself quite the same way. So

Anthony Marino [1:05:53]: Mm-hmm.

Dr. John Oberg [1:05:53]: Randy, tell people what to do. Let's let's tell people how they can follow along with all the all the abundance.

Randy Lorensen [1:05:58]: Download, subscribe, whatever you like. Do you like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, doesn't matter. Follow us, go to find Tail just search for Tales of Abundance and download, subscribe, tell your friends. It helps the algorithm in ways I don't understand, but it's it's good for us to help help spread in a little abundance in the world.

Dr. John Oberg [1:06:17]: Yeah, maybe even do it in two places if you really like us.

Randy Lorensen [1:06:19]: Yeah, there we go.

Dr. John Oberg [1:06:21]: Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time. Tales of Abundance. Thanks for being here.