The Todd Herman Show
Canceled and Threatened with Death: Meet Todd’s friend, Nikki Phillippi Ep-1871
So you're a successful YouTuber, you're a nice and intelligent young woman. One day, you confess to something that you felt you had to do something that's done every day in America. And then, all of a sudden, everything changes and you are under attack from people who used to be your friends. Nikki Philippi, who's a new friend of mine, joins me to talk about her journey.
What does God’s Word say?
Matthew 5:11-13
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Mark 11:25
And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
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- Broadcast on:
- 07 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
Decisions, decisions. Wait a minute, are you still looking for cars on Carvana? Yeah, decisions, decisions. When I used Carvana, I found the exact car I was looking for in minutes. Bought it on the spot. Electric or full diesel. Decisions. Come on, you've been at it for weeks. Just buy it already. You're right. Cross over it is. Decisions decided. Whether you know exactly what you want or like to take your time, buy your car the convenient way with Carvana. So you're a successful YouTuber and you're a nice young woman and you're an intelligent young woman. And so one day, you confess to something that you felt you had to do, something that's done every day in America. And then all of a sudden, everything changes and you are under attack from people who used to be your friends. And I want to talk with that, Nikki Philippi, who's a new friend of mine, through her dad, Dirk, and we will maybe even ask Dirk to come on set and take a bow. He's a very gifted speaker himself and musician. So we'll talk with Nikki about this and this is with the help of Boer, Capital Management, Know Your Risk Radio.com and of course, with God Almighty. The Todd Herman Show is 100 percent disapproved by big pharma technocrats and tyrants everywhere. Now, from the high mountains of free America, here's the Emerald City Exile. Todd Herman. Today is the day the Lord has made and these are the times to which God has decided we should live. And I'm joined in studio by Nikki Philippi. I do shake hands if I guess if that's okay. My hands all sweaty, but there we go, just keep it real. Todd, to the pro, welcome. You had an incredible experience that most people will never know is, first of all, you became a genuine for real YouTube star. I became a genuine for real YouTuber. Yeah, I've been doing it for 14 years at this point. And it changed my life, it changed my family's lives. I've loved it the whole time. But the last few years have been crazy. Yeah, we'll talk about it. Yeah. So I don't want to embarrass you, but your dad knows I said this. You remember this. The first time I met you was at a speech I gave in Corley and Idaho. And you came up to introduce yourself. Your dad, you guys, we were the same church. Do you remember the first thing I said to you? I mean, I didn't, but he shook my memory that you asked me like if I worked in entertainment somewhere. First thing is, yeah, what do you do in entertainment? Yeah, yeah. Right. And it was how you presented yourself and poise, etc. And I've seen your dad speak and maybe this is something that he's passed on to you. But talk about the process of getting into YouTube, how that happened, and then we'll get into this. The only thing I can describe it is as an attack. Yeah. Okay. So first off, I'm really bad at like summarizing things. I'm going to try really hard, but I'm a YouTuber. So I tend to just like blabber and on and on and on. And then when it's like focus on just the important parts. It's like, I don't know which parts important. It kind of all feels important. But yeah, I had, I started off doing more like traditional entertainment stuff in LA. I was working like indie films, commercials, lots of theme park stuff. The irony is, I don't know if I told you this when we talked last time. I think I did, but I'm not sure when I used to drive to like my shows or being on set or whatever, I would listen to KFI AM 640. And so I would frequently listen to Rush Limbaugh. So I'm pretty confident that I had heard you back in the day at some point, because I listened every single day. I'm sure you did, yeah. So it's very kind of ironic, very full circle being here, hanging out with you. But that's what I was doing first. And I had worked a job in Singapore with a theme park, came home because I had an injury. And when I came back, I was like, what am I going to do with my life? Like, I can't dance anymore. I'm not really that great of an actress. Like, I don't know, not a great singer. I don't know. And long story short, I ended up uploading to YouTube. It took me about six months. I kept uploading, taking down, uploading, taking down, feeling so embarrassed. And then I ended up uploading and just keeping it up and deciding not to tell anyone. I'm just not going to say anything. We'll see if anybody other than my parents watches my videos, kept it up and kind of slowly over the next year or two, built my audience. From there, because I was in LA, I started meeting a bunch of other LA YouTubers, which this, I mean, fast forward, I think this is a big part of the reason why our whole cancellation became what it was, is because from the beginning, I was very plugged in with like the LA YouTube community. And I was lucky enough to be brought in and meet all of these super talented people. A lot of them were not believers. We didn't share the same worldview, but that wasn't necessarily a problem for me. We bonded on a lot of the other creative things, you know, yeah, just like making content. And that's also a very different, like, it's a different thing being a creator. So there's even a bond in that too. Like, we know what we've been through, you know what I mean? So yeah, just kept making videos over the next decade. I'm really trying to shorten it here, because I can really go off into 14 different directions. I started off basically making like beauty content. It's actually really funny. I'll back up the very first video I uploaded onto YouTube. I was so embarrassed that I opened it by being like, "Hey guys, welcome back to my channel." Long time no see, even though it was my very first video on YouTube. I was just, I was so humiliated. And I just kind of kept going. And so my channel really started off as like beauty, lifestyle type stuff. The irony in that is not only did my mom say from the beginning, like, like, "Okay, yeah, you like the beauty thing." I kind of just liked it because of my background and entertainment, like having to get ready to go on stage on camera. But it's not like that was a passion of mine. And she's like, "How much can you really talk about? Like, are you going to run out of things to talk about?" I was like, "No, I'll just keep going." And I had a good friend of mine at the time who actually just texted me the other day and was like telling me she was proud of me. But she was like, "Why don't you talk more about political, social, historical stuff?" And I'm not saying this is true. I'm just quoting her. She was like, "You're one of the most educated people I know on the topic. Like, this is what you love." And I'm like, "No, that's not what I'm doing." Which that also kind of ties into once we fast forward to all the cancellation stuff. But yeah, I just kind of kept doing beauty, lifestyle stuff. Because my background was dancing and singing in musical theater as well, I was blessed enough in my journey to be able to make a lot of really cool music. I'm not one of those YouTubers that felt like above doing covers. I like doing covers. I think other people have made a lot of really great music. And I got connected with some really talented musicians and producers in L.A. that did a really great job at what would be the word, not re-engineering. Re-arranging. Re-arranging music in a way that we would take like these songs that I liked and then we would make them kind of our own. So I put out a lot of really cool songs that my dad actually played on one of them. We did "John Mayer and the Blood" and it was really cool. And yeah, it was just kind of doing my thing over the years. I feel like that's probably the broadest picture I could give of the journey without getting too far into details. So I've become a fan of your work. And that's not a phrase I use a lot because it means fanatic. I appreciate your work. And one of the things you're very clever at doing is sort of... I would describe this as a soft open. You're very skilled at talking with people being conversational. That's hard when you are talking to a camera to provide the illusion that you're talking with people. Now, through the years and maybe you're the same way you feel an audience. Because you get to know them through comments and occasionally meet them at live events. I've noticed that about you. And then came this time where you had to confess to something. And we do this. Sometimes my wife will say to me, "I learned things about you on your show." I didn't know that happened to you or I didn't know you felt that way. So I want to talk about the moment of the cancellation, how that happens. And then this discovery of, "Well, wait a minute. So this topic is the thing that makes me for a boat." And we'll talk about this with Nicki Philippi. There is a topic that freaks people out. I get it. It really does. It's stem cells. People hear that. They go, "No, I'm out." Because that's aborted babies. I would not have anything to do with a business that had anything to do with aborted babies. I didn't ever think I would fly to Mexico for healthcare. Why would I fly to a third world country for healthcare when we've got the greatest healthcare in the world up here? Well, I don't know your opinion. But certain events have changed my estimation of American healthcare, certain events. And I view it now much more as a two-pong system to get you to take pills or get cut open. And when I had run into this shoulder surgery and I wanted to recover more quickly, I went to renew healthcare. It's renew.healthcare, by the way. R-E-N-U-E.healthcare in part of our out of Mexico on the recommendation of a friend of mine who is a competitive master swimmer, third in the world, by the way, master swimmer. He hurt his shoulders so bad that he couldn't move his arm above his head, let alone swim. And he went down to renew. And within weeks, he was back to swimming. They put these ethically gathered stem cells into his arm, 50, 40, 45 million. They fought the inflammation. They rebuilt tissue. They can do this in your lower back. They can do this with neurological challenges. My shoulder recovered 50 times faster than my shoulder, where I didn't have the stem cells. And my buddy Boris ended up investing in that company. And he doesn't do that lightly. He's an investment professional. That wasn't a light decision he made. So I would look you in the eye, look anyone else in the eye. If you've been told it's pills or surgery or just live with the pain pause, go to renew.healthcare. Tell them you're a member of the Todd Herman Show podcast family or radio show family. They will tell you if they can help you. And if they cannot, they'll be honest and they'll say, so sorry, we can't. It's renew.healthcare. Nicki Philippa is with me. So you have been running in the circles of entertainment. And I've run in those circles, not like you, but a little bit. I used to have a Microsoft checkbook down in Los Angeles. So I was super popular because I had $50 million. Oh my gosh. Right. So I got invited to all the, you know, right parties, to all the little white lines and all the beautiful mirrors and seeing some of that stuff. Which by the way, I'm excited to interview you on my podcast as well. Because I can't wait to hear all your stuff in more detail, hopefully. So yeah, no, you'll get all the detail you want. You go, you get in front of the camera. And you talked about a heartbreaking decision you had to make. Yeah, so our dog Bowser, we had him for, he was about 10 and a half years old. And he had shown aggression before. We had worked with a trainer in the past. He was just, I mean, he was kind of an out of control dog in a lot of ways. And he had actually attempted to bite people a couple of times. There were just a few different things that had come up. And basically he bit our son in the face. And when that happened, and it happened in like a blink too. I mean, and you have to forgive me, I get, I get nervous even rethinking it. Not only just my stomach kind of shutters. When I think about how grateful I am that my son was okay. Like all he was left with, he has like a little mark on his face and that's it. And I'm sure everyone has seen, especially in the last few years, which I don't think this is a coincidence. How many stories have come out of kids being either mauled to death or just having their face ripped off? Like it literally makes me shudder when I think about how grateful I am that, that my son was okay. But he bit our son in the face. And after that, it was like, okay, stuff has happened. Multiple things have led up to this. We need to rehome him. And so we had reached out to an organization to talk about rehoming him. And they basically walked us through the fact that they're like, you cannot rehome this dog for a lot of different reasons. Not only like do bite laws vary state by state, but he had shown aggression before. He was elderly, essentially, like that breed of dog. He was in the chapter of his life where he was nearing the end anyways. And so once again, trying to not go off in too many details, it was a hard phone call. It was really devastating. I've been with my husband for 16 years. That was one of the few times I've ever seen him cry was when they told us, like you can't rehome him. So we had to put Bowser down and we did it in our home with an anesthesiologist, if that's the term for it. And afterwards, I felt like I had to tell the internet, mostly because a lot of my videos over the years, I do a variety of videos, like I said, I've done beauty and lifestyle and music and this and that, and I've done a lot of vlogs. And so my audience that had really watched faithfully had seen from the very beginning when we first brought Bowser into our home, and it couldn't just be like, oh, Bowser's just gone. And I didn't want to lie, not only because I don't lie, but also because honestly, and this is ironic, I thought, oh my gosh, if I change the story, then someone's going to do some digging, and then they're going to find it. It's going to blow up this whole thing. The best thing to do is to just tell the truth. And so we filmed a video just basically telling everyone what had happened. And after I put it up, we put up an Instagram post to say like, hey, this is what happened. I have a full video out of my YouTube channel. And it was within minutes, like the post went completely viral. I actually ended up privateing my Instagram about 24 hours later because the post had like 30,000 comments on it. It was insane. And we started getting death threats immediately. I mean, that night, I remember I was getting texts and phone calls the next morning when I woke up. I had texts with pictures of my house and my address like we're coming for you. You think you can hide, you can't. Like I had mentioned, I had become friends over the years with a lot of the LA creator community, which like I alluded to earlier, I think that's a big reason this blew up because a handful of those creators, I don't know if they had been waiting for me to like fall or what, or maybe it really just in their worldview, this was the last straw, but this is the thing that really like set them off. So a lot of them made videos about us. And from their worldview, which I've learned a lot since that point that like, okay, this whole animal worship thing is a thing that runs rampant in culture. It makes sense to me now could not have foreseen it then. We were completely blindsided. Like there were a lot of people that felt we did that for views. And I'm thinking like, man, I would take that back if I could. And in some ways, not the situation, not the fact that we put Bowser down, but just this idea of like doing something for views. It's like it was horrible in a matter of two days we had lost all of our sponsorships. This happened in March, I believe. And we had at that point, sponsorships booked out through Christmas. And all of them one by one just kept pulling because the mob, the online mob, which that's a whole separate thing, I do think that the online mob is representative of culture in some ways. On the other hand, my dad and I've talked about this a lot. I don't know how many of these online people are actually people. I think that like, if they paid people to show up to protests back in the day, like how much easier is it for there to be bots to stick on people who don't align with your agenda? And if I had learned one thing over the previous decade on YouTube, was that I did not necessarily align with the agenda of YouTube corporate and a lot of these bigger corporate entities that were involved in YouTube. So yeah, it just exploded really fast. And when we first posted it actually, my manager had called me up and she was like, you need to take that down. Like you can honor his memory without saying what happened. And first off, I was like, well, it's already up. Like the internet doesn't forget, which on a side note, people always ask us why we still have this video up. And that's the reason we still have it up. A, the internet doesn't forget, what am I going to do? Take it. It didn't happen. But B, I don't feel like we have anything to be ashamed of. Like I said to you, if we could go back, we've thought about it in circles over and over and over, we would have done the exact same thing. Would we have necessarily told everyone? I don't know about that. You know, I think that it was supposed to play out this way. God's done a lot in my heart and in my husband's heart through this. It's been painful, but I think it's been necessary. But we wouldn't have changed like we still would have put Bowser down at that point. But yeah, she'd said that to me. I'm like, dude, I'm not going to take this down. Like we've already told everyone it's already loose. But we eventually we parted ways as well. So everything we had five employees at the time we had to let everyone go. It all changed in the matter of like a week. It was really depressing. It was really scary. I think I cried from like honestly like four months, like not to be traumatic. Yeah, I get it. But I mean, at that point, I had already put in a decade of work into this. I had poured my heart and soul into YouTube and worked really hard alongside other people. And it was very hard for me to wrap my brain around how doing something that I actually thought and still think was right could get me in so much trouble and change things so radically. Like it kept feeling like not reality. Like, I'm going to wake up. What the heck is this? There's an obvious comparison that people are probably making in their minds in the podcast family is that, okay, if you'd come on and said, hey, guys, you know, my husband and I have been together for 16 years. We actually got pregnant. It's not a good time for us. Yeah, exactly. So it made the really difficult decision to have an abortion. Nothing. Nothing. You'd still have sponsors, et cetera. My daughter's a vegan, so she'd hear your story and she'd be one of those people who's outraged. I'll just tell you that, right? Which, to be honest, those are the only people my husband gets mad when I say this. But those are the only people who's anger I kind of respect. Because I'm like, well, at least you're morally consistent. Right. You don't eat meat. But it's like if you eat burgers, like I'm sorry, you're missing the consistency here. Well, let me share with you just a quick story of something happening to me because you speak of the mob and I met the mob. I've met the mob twice. I've met the, like, Antifa types who've come to my studio in Seattle with the intention of intimidating me. And then when they found out, wait, you actually do carry guns? Yeah, I remember when I said that on the show. But I'll tell you a story about a lady, a lady who I wished a painful death upon my little girl, who at the time was in kindergarten. And I'll share this with you in a second. We're talking with Nikki Philippi. There's a link to her podcast or YouTube vlogs, etc. In the show notes, yeah, same thing. We'll tell this story and I'll tell it because it was a lady. I've confronted men and there's a funny thing that happens. Somehow in the world of talk radio, male bullies get the opinion that all talk show hosts are really small, wispy little dudes. So back when I was big and could intimidate people with, you know, physical bulk and a walk outside and they look at you and they get this instant step back of like, oh, oh, gosh, you're not the little dude we thought you were. No, in fact, I grew up half redneck and genetically I'm 98.7% redneck and I used to break neck. Now I'm a disciple of Christian. I don't do that anymore. But I do like to maintain muscle mass and male female. This is key for your life. You need to do this and I'll give you a hack. I only recently got a permission to talk about mass times from bi-optimizers. This is a really powerful set of digestive enzymes. So powerful that birch international university did a study. People who used this product versus people who didn't and those poor suckers, those losers. I'm just kidding. Bitter clickers who refuse to use mass times, they got ripped off because of people who use mass times got a two, no, a 1200% increase in amino acids in their bodies. This is the building block of protein, which is the building block of muscle. And that can help you sustain muscle through restrictive weight loss. And if you're aging, that's really important to sustain muscle. If you're young, you got to be ripped. Everyone's ripped. Got to be ripped. Go to bi-optimizers.com/tod to get 10% off. Mass times and all their products stop letting bad digestion stop you from reaching your full potential. It's bi-optimizers.com/tod. So I'll make this brief because the interview is about you. I just want to share this. I met the mom. This lady, when I was the chief digital strategist at the RNC, she found my email address. She sent me this note and she said, oh, no, she did it on social media. That's right. She did it on social media. I hope your daughter dies slowly of a really, really painful disease like cancer. Right. You kidding me? No, she said this. I just. She said this. And I used this tool. I can't remember the name of two anymore where it was this incredible database. You took someone's social media handle and it would find all their email addresses. So I learned that she owned a jewelry store in Maryland. So that weekend, my wife and daughter and I drove out. And my wife stayed in the car. She didn't want to see this lady. And my daughter and I went in. My daughter was kindergarten, blonde, blue-eyed, very friendly little girl. She loved the shop and she bought some trinkets. I bought them for her. And the lady was so kind. You're like, oh, it's such a lovely girl and stands. Oh, so neat of your daddy to buy this to you. And and honey, you go into the car with mom and I said, you know, I'd love to be able to know when you have specials coming. Let me give you my business card. Oh, so she didn't even recognize you by your face. No, she looked at my business card, taught her my chief digital strategist, Republican National Committee. Wow. You. Mm hmm. That's the little girl you wish death upon. Wow. So why don't you come to the car with me and why don't you say it to her face? I. And she just shook. I mean, shoulders shook. She started to tear up. I am so sorry. I can't believe what politics does to me. I said, well, but she's right here. Well, I'll give you your money back. No, no. Wow. No, that's okay. I don't want my money back. I bought that for my daughter. But why wouldn't you go say this? Because I don't believe it. I, I, I am so sorry. This is a real wake up call for me. I said, well, I'm glad that's why I came. I didn't think you meant it. I don't really think you meant it. But you know, they mean it at the time because I'm making you cry. I'm sorry. It's just, it's just incredible to me that. Yeah. Social media for many people, and I got addicted to this, the dopamine rush of, of owning the lips on Twitter. Oh, right. You know, I'm saying, oh, you just said, yeah, boom, boom, boom. And it's very ungodly. And so I was thinking about about the people I've burned and the old days of talk, ready to get off my phone, you idiot. And I guess it was my chance to experience that a little bit, to experience that, that anger. But I have a theory about you and God. Oh, let's hear the theory. Well, let's hear, first of all, how your approach to doing your job has changed at all. If you've kind of come back and started to make content again. And I've let Mac and looked at some of your older work. And I see that you are weaving in so well to your content. A little topic on medical freedom here. Just a little mention and you know, and you do it in a very wise and YouTube safe way. But people know what you're saying, a little food freedom here. And then even some mentions of your faith in Jesus, just a little bit. And you do it well enough that I think people can take this as bits and pieces of something they'd want to look at later. Like, huh, she has this faith. Maybe I should. So how did that change for you when you started to come back into the world? Well, it's interesting because, you know, how you see yourself versus how other people see you is always just that very interesting. Because I feel like I've always kind of had that in the mix. Like, I used to kind of joke. It wasn't really a joke. But like, I want to be like a vitamin wrapped in chocolate. Like, I want to have them to be like this, this goodness out there, but it's digestible, whatever that means, which my view on that has even kind of changed. That's probably, I guess, to shorten the answer to your question. The biggest thing that has changed for me since going through all of this is realizing that I can't control how other people feel about me. So even if I want to be a vitamin wrapped in chocolate, it's like, someone might still think like I taste gross, you know, that it's like not I can't control people's reactions. Don't be an everlasting Godstopper though. So those are gross. Oh, I've never tried it. Oh, I don't think I've ever tried one though. Well, they're not real. Oh, we've been joking. Don't tell the kids. That's so I'm not I'm not that clued into junk food stuff slash haven't watched really won't kind of minute, but got it now. Oh, wait a minute. You're dead. Hey, listen, I think you're a great father and a great man, but that's that's a kind of against you. No, it's it's not okay. It's not because I can watch movies over and over and I don't. My husband gets mad at me because he's like, we just watched that. I'm like, but I won't remember. I'm like, it's an advantage, right? Paying attention to different things. I forget. I miss like main points, like the main candy in the movie apparently. Yeah, I've just realized that like, I can't control how people are going to take things. So I can try to be like as nice and as sweet as I and it's not that I don't think that that's not a worthwhile endeavor. You know, all these books, like my parents did have me read growing up, you know, like, how do friends influence people? It's like, I think those are worthwhile skills, but my opinion has changed in the sense that like, I don't think that that guarantees you anything. And ultimately, especially in the view of like the gospel and how God's going to work through you and through stuff, sometimes it's just like, Oh, well, you just got to say it. Like, you're going to be too concerned about like, Oh, hurting people. It's like, sometimes you just got to say it. So it's funny because I feel like I've become more emboldened since the cancellation to just say things more upfront versus my past content. It was more, I feel like just like little drips here and there, although I did have a channel called Asniki that was an advice channel, and I was definitely more bold on that channel. But I still, I mean, this is me being bold now. So if I'm still soft, maybe compared to you, for me, that's all very bold. Well, I think because of the time I spent initially in talk radio and what it was, and how the medium worked at that time, you know, bold was rewarded. Maybe there's a gender difference. And I'm not really joking about growing up Redneck. I mean, one of our solutions in junior high and high school was I'll meet you at the church. That's where the fizz fights occurred. Yeah, I'm a native Angeleno. Right. Okay. So you guys, you did the drive by shooting. Right. That's Nikki hanging out the door with the, yeah, right. Oh, like a suburban Angeleno, just mean like more of like an atheistic society. So you threw paintballs at people. Yeah. You know, it's just different than the Redneck Meachit church society. I mean, there's advantages to that. So I, I had this experience there where when I got to Finland for Rush Limbaugh, for the first time, and I was working with that guy, who you can't see on camera, Alex. That's Alex. And I got this word, hey, we're going to ask you to film for Rush, and I did it. And it's cool. You guys go back that far, by the way. Yeah. Long time. And the, when the, the, I went into the studio and I was listening to the parodies of Rush, because he had these parodies that would run down the affiliates, like, you know, 600 or some stations, just to make sure that everyone's getting to feed. Okay. So the radio stations catch, catch on. Okay. We're getting the EIB feed from New York. And it was fine. And then I realized, oh my gosh, I'm about to go on a program with the largest radio audience that in all reality will ever exist. 25 million people. I mean, not all at once, but, you know, five, 10 million persons every 15 minutes. And I dropped my knees and prayed. And when I stood up and the parodies ended, and then there was silence. And then the beep of the satellites, all of a sudden, I was grossly nervous and dry-moused. I mean, that makes sense. And then when I heard boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. It's happening. And I, I, I believed fully in my soul that someone was going to walk in the door and go, Oh, wait a minute, we didn't understand. You're the redneck guy. No, no, we can't have this. This was a big mistake. We thought you were someone else. But it occurred to me later, and Alex and I talked about this, that I said to you, do you remember this? I said, you know, it's really weird. I prayed during Russia's show, but not ours. And you and I started to pray every morning before the show. And Alex is a very stout firm man of God. And the show began to change. And I found it very difficult to not speak God's word on a consistent basis. And pastors warned me about this. They said, you're going to find that you find it very hard to speak about things other than God's word. So I have this theory with you. And I want to share this with you. I can't believe we didn't bring this in. And this is completely Niana's fault, but she's a short timer. She's leaving. So don't get, don't to be too hard. Or she forgot to bring you the bone frog coffee. That's Niana. She forgot to bring you the bone frog coffee. That's why I don't drink coffee. I'm sorry. Okay. So that's a big problem. We're going to fix that. We're going to fix that. But wait, you drink coffee. Oh, okay. So I'll get your dad the bone frog familial benefits. Bone frog coffee is a brand that contains great coffee. There's a difference here. There are brands of coffee. And here's what they do. They go do a deal with people who make coffee and they say, Hey, can we pretend that's our coffee? It's called private labeling. And they drop ship stuff and they put a cool brand on it. Maybe something to do with, Oh, I don't know a firearm. And then they say, Oh, we defend the second amendments. And then Kyle Rittenhouse uses his second amendment. So it's not be murdered by a couple of pedophile antifa types. And then that same company says, Oh, we don't stand with that use of the second amendment. That's weird. Bone frog's not going to back down from the brands because bone frog is the insignia of a fallen Navy seal. And Tim Cruickshink, the founder and CEO of bone frog coffee is a former Navy seal. He was a medic attached to the seal teams. And I know it's supposed to say corn and he says medic, you take it up with him. He was also a buds instructor teaching people how to be seals. He will not skimp on the coffee. So he worked with Dave Stewart, who started Seattle's best coffee, which is a legendary coffee company. It was so good that Howard Schultz had to buy it. When he went public to get it out of his way, the brand still exists because the coffee's better. So try this. Honor Tim, honor Navy seals. If you drink coffee, try bone frog, get the six four out samples. You'll get 10% off your first purchase. You go to bonefrogcoffee.com/tod. Now, if you're buying the coffee and you're drinking the coffee and you haven't subscribed to the coffee, I would tell you that you might be not as smart as you think you are. Just all do respect because you could save 15% on subscription coffee. Just by going to bonefrogcoffee.com/tod, by the subscription, now you're getting the great coffee at a cheaper price and you're not a communist anymore. Bonefrogcoffee.com/tod. It's a bonus. Yeah, it's a bonus, probably no longer comments. We'll get some for your dad. Awesome. So here's my theory. Is I think you got to see and feel persecution. Now, I'm not saying that you're preaching the word of God when you had to put Bowser down. But God does not call the equipped. So he equips the cold. And I think you live in a time of persecution. And I think your generation is going to face much more of it than you would ever, ever imagine. And the Lord Jesus had told us effectively, look, they hated me first. Blessed are you when they persecute you in my name. And you're uniquely able to use the platform you've been given and the personality with which God gifted you to begin speaking these things into a generation that they're chasing after teachers, that they're itching ears, wanting to hear things. You live in a world where pastors will say things that simply are not in the Bible. And people don't know. 15% of Americans have a biblical worldview, though I think about 65% of people call themselves Christians. And I think it's something along the lines of seven and a half percent of youth pastors have an actual biblical worldview. That's creepy. Right. So I have this theory that you taste a little bit of persecution and you live through it. And you're so nicky. And you still have a family that loves you and you still have a husband who loves you. So that's my theory. I mean, I'm not going to disagree with that. I think, you know, when everything happened, which there was even, I mean, there was even more that came after that. It was kind of like a punch and then a double punch because leading up to that time before we had our son, I don't know, should I even go off on this? You go off on whatever you want. You're professional. Sometimes I get a little paranoid, because like I said, I can go on for hours. So it's like, I don't know what I'm about to say how long I don't know what we need to do. We took the brown and I'm inside of the dish. We got your management. It's all fine with the limo and everything. I don't get the brown. Oh, like diva comment. Got you. You wait. You don't get the Van Halen thing? No, wait a minute. In terms of the show. Wait, you, your dad was a successful student. You didn't tell the Van Halen stories. Van Halen had a writer in their concert. Their concert writer said that they wanted bowls of M&Ms with all the brown M&Ms for most people. It was just to be jerky. I did pick up on the vibe though, because while I'm not saying this is true, I've heard the same thing of JLo. So that's really what I thought. Yeah, I'm not saying that's true or whatever, but you know, picky about the foods or whatever, which I'm picky about my foods too. It just wouldn't be M&Ms. Anyways, wow, back on focus. So after the Bowser situation, part of the reason it was so prolonged was not just that cancellation. And this is, I guess, kind of along the lines of like the persecution and it really feeling like it was targeted because of our faith. We had been going on a journey for the previous like two years prior to getting pregnant and having my son an adoption journey, essentially. I had thought for a long time that I didn't want to have any biological children. This is kind of, it's fascinating to me because it's kind of part of this whole thing as well. I think it's kind of in the same subject vein. And the reason I thought I didn't want to have biological children was very layered. I dealt with chronic pain for a long time. So that was part of it. I thought, man, having a baby is going to like ravage my body. And then part of it. And I've actually referred to this as probably like the biggest leftist lie I fell for because even though I was from, I'm from LA, I've really kind of always been more conservative. Like I told you I'd be driving to like an event listening to KFI. Like I've always been, I got married to 20, you know, I've always been more conservative. But at the time, the kind of like I said, the biggest leftist lie I fell for was thinking, okay, well, overpopulation, like there's too many people on the planet. There's not enough resources and holding hands with, well, what's the big deal about my DNA? Why would I need to duplicate my own DNA? Like if there's all these kids that need homes that need moms and dads, like, why would I need to have any children? And now to me, those are almost, you know, separate things are obviously our orphans, kids that need mom and moms and dads. Now without going too conspiratorial through our journey, our eyes were opened a lot to, oh, there is corruption in our opinion, not only within CPS that we started kind of seeing. That's almost a separate topic, but we experienced that. But also when we were looking at adopting internationally, we confronted or we saw what we started to believe like, okay, I think there might be human trafficking going on here. And you know, it wasn't so clear that we could get on the internet and be like, Hey, everyone, there's human trafficking happening here. But stuff started presenting itself. And then we started reading certain blog articles and encountering things that we were like, I think there might be trafficking going on here. Just very weird. The whole idea of how many orphans there actually were, the whole idea of how many kids actually needed to be ripped out of their homes in the States and replaced with new family. It just all started being a big, giant, confusing pot of questions, honestly. Yeah. And basically, after we had gone through this whole journey of like looking at international adoption, looking at domestic private adoption, looking at fostering with the possibility like fostering to adopt, we ended up getting through the end of our journey with this foster program, which was like, it was a few months long, full of like blood work and psychological interviews and evaluations and letters written by family members. We had received a call from the agency basically telling us that if we weren't willing to change the age range that we were willing to accept, that they didn't have a use for us. Now, on a side note, that was a completely different story than what we had been told the whole time through our journey. But I say all that to say that was kind of the final thread for me. And I was like, dude, am I sure that I don't want to have babies? Like I'm getting to the point now where I'm starting to get older. Are you sure, Nikki? So we ended up trying for a child, got pregnant the first month that decision was made really fast. But after the cancellation happened with Bowser, about two months after that, everything reared up again, but not in regards to Bowser, a clip from a video that we had made when we were documenting our adoption journey ended up going viral. They took about 30 seconds out of a video that was over an hour long. Now, besides the fact that the video was over an hour long, that one video was part of a multi video series. As you can maybe tell about me now from talking to me, sometimes I'm honest to a fault. And when we were going through looking at international adoption, we were looking at different countries, which country would be the right fit. Every country has different requirements, different things that they allow or don't allow. And one of the countries that we had been looking at was Thailand, which ironically enough, we had actually been giving monetarily to a anti human trafficking program in Thailand. For almost a decade, my dad actually has visited the home over there. And in the video, we had talked about like, Hey, we started looking at Thailand as an option, but now it looks like Thailand's not going to work either. And basically, what happened was when we were going through all of the things that were laid out, like the qualifications, one of the things on the list was saying that the child cannot appear online anywhere for a year, or they will take them back, or that you run the risk of them taking them back. Now, side note, I say this hesitantly, you decide whether you want this and or not, that also smells to me a little odd, a little bit like, why wouldn't you want the child on the internet for a year? Is it because they're going to look the same for about a year? They're going to be more recognizable. Like, this is weird to me. I'm not necessarily making that accusation, but it smelled really weird. That's weird. I never would have thought of that angle, but that's weird. Apparently, a lot of people didn't. And the reason we backed out, though, was not, Oh man, we can't put them in our vlogs. Like, this is our job for a living. If there were layers of an onion, yes, we are online for a living. If they showed up in the background or whatever, even that could be a risk of them being taken back. Really, it was my very level headed, my very level headed assistant who was like, Nikki, you can't guarantee that like a full, what if you're at a birthday party? What if, and this used to happen to me a lot back then, it doesn't happen so much now, partially because I spent a lot of my days at home with my newborn being a milk maker. But back then, I would be out and about and I would come home and I would open up Twitter and someone has seen me out and taken a picture of me. Like, oh, I saw you, but I didn't want to say hi. I was too nervous. And so that's a picture that was taken. I mean, no big deal, but like without my consent, I didn't okay this. And so my assistant was like, dude, you can't, you can't make that guarantee. You run the risk of taking a child and then them being ripped apart from you again, because your lifestyle does not align with like the requirements that this country has laid out. So we tried to explain that. I may be over explained, which I might be doing right now, but I explained that in the video. They took a 30 second clip that made it basically look like the reason we didn't adopt a child was because we couldn't exploit them. What a quote. And that blew up into its own thing. Like literally all over again, cover of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC. So it was two basically two cancellations backed back within a two month period. And so that's really to my defense, why I cried for four months is because it like it exploded. And then we moved here actually shortly after because when we started getting so many death threats and had to file police reports, my parents were like, what are you even doing there? Like, just move here now. And we moved here. And then everything blew up again in regards to the adoption. And it's crazy too, because the internet's like a bad game of telephone. Like I still, I mean, this last week, I probably got this comment three to five times from people saying like, why should I listen to you? The girl who returned a handicapped child because she couldn't. She couldn't exploit them. I'm like, why we weren't even in the program? What are you talking about? The things people, quote, no about us. It's crazy. Right. There's some things that I still get to this day. And I'll tell you about this in a second. Nikki Philippize with us. You'll relate to this. Because we're just talking about in you talk about, I don't use the word handicapped and understand what people do. It's a very, very decent word. In regard to a company we work with called Alan Soaps, this is named after a young kid. He's 13. He's been through like 18 operations, is effectively nonverbal, but a brilliant kid. And his dad, when Alan was in the womb, his dad's name is John, the medical authorities came and looked at the body structure that Alan had. And he has a very rare disease that makes his spine very, very unique. And he's going to have all these neurological issues. They showed him the ultrasound and said to his wife, why don't we kill the baby for you? Why don't we just do that? Because the baby's not going to have any quality of life. This changed John and his wife. John was a very successful digital marketer. And he realized, the world doesn't want my son. How's he ever going to work? And then when he was born, and it turned out he was so profoundly autistic, state authorities would contact him, hey, you know, we have homes for him. We could storm someplace for you and you can get on with your life. And he had this realization, gosh, my son's never going to work. How's he going to sustain himself? So he left basically the world of digital marketing, which he was very successful. And he said, what's a product everybody needs? Soap. He did not make it. So he interfaced with a family who's from Europe, three generations over here now. And three generations of soap making expertise, Alan invents the soaps to the fragrances. Some of them come from, well, they come from his memories, things that mean something to him. My favorite is Cedarwood Jasmine. And he remembered the smell of that by going through his grandmother's memory chest and pulling out wedding, you know, pictures. And so there's a lot of very unique sense. There's unsented soap. Now you fast forward all these years later. It's not one kid working there, a young person. It's three. And all of them are people that the, I call the party would have just thrown out. So the offer I make to viewers listeners is this. You can continue to buy soap from companies who wouldn't have done that. And that soap is probably made by some slave labor. It is almost certainly not all natural. And they don't have the mission of hiring people like Alan and Ian and other people. This place does, and it's better so it's all natural and it's gentle. So go to alansoaps.com/todd. You get 10% off everything there. And every time you use this soap or the liquid soap, Ian's blend, put that in your business. It gives you a great opportunity to say, yeah, to us, all lives actually do matter. So it's alansoaps.com/todd. I was talking to you about meeting the mob and about that experience and what you've met and what you've been through. And I'll say one more instance, and then I want to ask you a question. I was speaking at Georgetown University. And once again, they came after my daughter. So I was setting up to speak and I had my desktop was showing on the projector behind me. And there was a picture of my daughter. And this guy sitting in the front row says, he's there early. He goes, that's your daughter. I go, yeah, yeah, it is. So he'd give my speech. And afterwards, he raised his hand. I said, yeah, he goes, yeah, I'm the guy who asked if that was your daughter earlier. You know, I hope she dies of throat cancer. And I hope there's nothing you can do for her. I hope it's painful. And it takes two or three years. And there's nothing you can do. And the place starts to boo. I mean, to the defense of these college students, they start to boo. I said, no, no, let them talk. He goes, well, you don't want other people to have access to healthcare. So why should she? And this is Obamacare. What a comparison you are on, sir. Right. And I said, okay. Well, she's here. She's in the room. So she's seated up in the back row. So honey, would you stand up? And people turned around and he turned around. And I said, yeah, I got you. She's not really here because I wouldn't burn her in such a place. You're threatening a little girl. Because you say I don't want people have access to healthcare. I do. I just don't think Obamacare will do that. I think it will destroy access to healthcare. And if that doesn't explain my position, I'm pretty sure if you really need to take off the Pontech Philippe watch that your parents give you as part of your trust fund in the $3,000 sweat suit, I don't want that to get dirty. You and I could go out back and we could probably figure this out real quick. Well, I was just saying, I say, I know you're just saying. So meeting the mob, you met the mob, but then Jesus met the mob. And I think about our savior and the things that were no doubt said to him on the way to the cross. And save yourself. You saved others. Save yourself. Look at you now. King of the Jews. And that thing he said just before he died about his tormentors. Forgive them, father. They know not what they do. How are you with forgiveness? Oh, I don't even know how to answer that question. That's that was a much more profound question than I expected you to ask. I mean, I want to say, I want to say good, like I'm not, you know, but that at the same time, I know that I'm a sinner. And I know that, you know, my feelings on the mob in general kind of change day to day. I will say within the last few months, more than more than anger at people, I felt a lot of shame at times and just embarrassment. Like I should have known like why, why did I share all of this? But I feel like God's lifted a lot of that from me recently. So I don't, yeah, I don't know. I didn't expect you to ask that. I almost don't have an answer. How's your heart feel? I mean, depends on the day and the time. How's it feel right now? Well, you asking me that, I guess it feels kind of kind of sad. I go towards sadness more than anger. You know, I don't, you know, when you said that like I have kind of a soft touch, I don't tend to go towards like, I don't tend to be a fighter. I don't tend to go as much towards like anger and rage. I tend to more like, shut down and kind of fall under the weight of people's hate and anger. You know, so when you've told me your stories of confronting the mob and like, how strong you've been, I'm like, man, I want to be more like that because I kind of tend to be like, melt under it. So wait, wait, you haven't melted. You're sitting right here. Thank you. You haven't melted. Thank you. You are strong in a different way. Well, I appreciate that. I don't know that it's that strong to threaten the jacket guy up. Well, yeah, I mean, you said that to me last time too. And I was like, I'll take that. I appreciate that. But yeah, I mean, I don't I don't sit and think about being angry at them all the time. Yeah, man, I really don't even I feel like I'm at such a loss for words. I don't even know what to say. Forgive this is such a weird process. I was talking to my daughter about this. You know, she suffered some significant harm. And we had a a sermon at church and it was about forgiveness. And she and I were visiting about that afterwards. And she said, well, some people just don't deserve it. I don't want to do that. I don't want to call them and tell them. And I said, Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You thought you have to tell them? She said, I don't know. No, you tell Jesus. And let me ask you this, honey, you forgiving them in confession to the Lord Jesus. What does that do for them? She said, nothing. Right. What does it do for you? And I shared with her. He who extends mercy will receive it. I'm not saying you're not a merciful person. I know you to be. But that discovery to her that, wait, I'm not doing this for them. No, you're doing this because you love Jesus. I wonder what our world would be like. If we forgave the big things as easily as sort of the little things, what was done to you is not a little thing. It's a big thing. But for instance, what if we forgive political enemies in our heart every morning? How different would our day be when we sit down to concern political news and in advance say, I forgive all these people for all the evil that's being done through them? I mean, I know I don't want to go too deep, but no, I mean, you're making my wheels turn and you're kind of making me think about the fact this is like a live on therapy or on screen therapy session. You're making me think about the fact that like maybe I've been sitting more in a place of like, don't be angry, like more neutrality type of thing, like let it go. But I've, I mean, yeah, you're making me realize I've never, I've never gone to the Lord in prayer and like asked for him to give me a feeling of forgiveness towards them, like help me to forgive them. I've never done that. I think that's maybe why I was caught off guard because I've really just been trying to sit in this camp of like, like I said, more neutrality like, okay, well, you know, they're in the wrong like, I know my worldview. I know what I feel like the Lord has called us to do. But yeah, that's you're definitely giving me something to bring to God in prayer. That's really good. Good. Yeah. I think we owe it to ourselves to examine that. And I know that there's probably things I should forgive to talk about this. So close us off for us like, what, what do you think God is calling you to do specifically? I know you've been praying about this. You might not have an answer. Maybe it's continuing to do what you're doing. You live in the high mountains of free Americans. Yeah, I love that you call it that by the way. I think that's kind of accurate, right? I feel like it's a radio show host thing to like have a name for the area. I like the one you've coined. I'm like, that's perfect. I know. And in podcasting area, you're just supposed to start talking with the people, but I can't have a little. No, that's perfect. I love it. The little radio habits. Yeah, I didn't mean that it's a slam. I like that you named it. What do you think God is calling you to do professionally? And I don't know that you separate that from being don't call yourself a milk maker. I got it. Honestly, though, I'm sure that women who have to. It is one of my top jobs in life right now, which actually, you know, when I was talking about the adoption thing, it's incredible because what that the path that that led me down, I did not expect in a million years. I did not realize that that would lead me towards, okay, yes, just, you know, having my own biological child. No, that led me on the path towards this whole world of medical freedom, this whole world of like, Oh, in my opinion, I'm a little bit radical when it comes to the birth thing. My eyes, in my opinion, have been opened to the fact that birth is something. And I realized there are emergencies. This is not a shaming thing for women that have had actual emergencies and praise God for the hospitals when there really are emergencies. But I think that it's something that God made women to do that has completely been twisted and altered. And the whole experience has been, I mean, dude, I could go off on a whole thing about that. And I did not expect that like having my babies at home, the minute I met them, it was such a like, almost one of my first thoughts was, this is why they don't want people to have babies. Like, even if I hadn't had that natural birth experience, I think it's still the same thing. But I think that all of it kind of builds together and holds hands and it's like, wow, this natural birth experience in my environment, in my home, grabbing my baby and holding them, it's like, I mean, it's one of the closest feelings I've ever had to God because this person just comes out of you. And you're like, what, they're looking at you, they're crying, they're making noise. And you're like, a brand new person, like, what it's, I mean, I have chills because it was so soul altering. And so yes, the milk maker joke is a joke, but that's a whole other thing I could go off on, like a rant about formula and the lies that have been sold to women about their bodies, not working properly. And what milk, like the fact that God made us to make that milk for our babies, immune systems are meant to be built a certain way. And I think that making milk is part of that. So I am kidding. And then I'm not kidding because I do believe that is one of the top jobs that God has for me right now is establishing my baby's lives through being a milk maker. No, that's perfect. That was a whole rant. No, but the fake people are making another run at breast milk is not healthy. Yeah. Oh, exactly. We're going to give you something unbelievable. And they did that early on. They did that to me, my mom gave into that because the pediatrician said, right? Yes. But the powder, the powder, Mrs. Herman, is going to be so much better. And I know you and I are on the same page in regards to all of that. I've seen you talk enough about this where I'm like, okay, he gets it. Yeah. Oh, baby. But I didn't mean to not answer your question to answer your question, which is kind of still a non answer, but it's a little bit of an answer. You know, you had me start that book experiencing God and I'm going through it slowly. It takes me a minute. I'm also in another Bible study right now. But in, I think it was chapter one, he talks about really what my answer is to you, which is that we don't have to know the whole plan in order to move forward. And what I have known for the last three years since the cancellation happened is like, okay, my path forward is not super clear, but God has made it clear to me, my husband and my immediate family that I'm not supposed to stop. You know, we did some marriage counseling after everything went down and it was pastoral counseling. And the pastor echoed the same sentiment. He's like, dude, if your husband, your family, you are not getting, because I'm like, maybe this is a sign. I'm supposed to stop. He's like, no, I don't think that's what's going on. If you're not getting a clear like stop. And so at this point, I don't know where God's bringing me, but I'm continuing to move forward. I am very passionate, as you can tell, about a lot of topics. So I'm going to continue to share, keep creating, praying for God's wisdom and guidance. But I don't have a clear trajectory. Like, this is what I'm doing. See all there in four years, you know, five years. So I'm just going to keep going forward and see what where God leads me. It will involve I'm predicting. And for me to pick God, it will involve communicating and involve this great skill that he's given you, this conversational skill of people listening, feel like they're being talked with. So I appreciate you coming on and what you're doing. And I accept your kind offer to be on your program, which is on YouTube, much more successful than mine. But I beach in the audio sphere. Yeah, exactly. I beach in the audio sphere. Dude, I appreciate you bringing me on. You are the first person, really. I've had, I've had kind of a conversation about this with my friend Abby, but I haven't really gotten to talk about this with people. And I've been saying since I met you, like mom, I think he is the perfect person to talk about this with because he gets it. So I appreciate you bringing me on your show. I'm really excited to interview you on mine. You're actually going to be the first episode of my brand new relaunched podcast. So that's going to be exciting. And I just appreciate you and the work you're doing. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. This is the Todd Herman show. Please go be well. Be strong, be kind, and please make every effort to walk in the life of Christ. [BLANK_AUDIO]