Transcript

Edmund: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Real + True podcast. I’m your host, Edmund Mitchell. 

Emily: And I’m your host Emily Mentock. 

Edmund: And we’re really excited. This podcast again, is for us to discuss the unit of videos from Real + True in more depth. And to dive into the content and share a little bit of the behind the scenes action. So, how are you doing Emily? 

Emily: Doing well, Edmund! We’re excited to talk today about Unit 2. 

Edmund: Yes. It’s launched. 

Emily: It’s launched. Where, today’s the day it launched, actually. 

Edmund: Yeah and I’m going to talk a little bit about the unit, the overview, right? 

Emily: Yes! Give us the thesis, what was the, what is the sort of, what are we building up to in Unit 2? 

Edmund: Yeah. So every video, if you remember there’s four videos and they’re kind of centered around, we prayerfully picked like a thesis that all of them could hang together with, and for this one, the catechism section we’re covering is paragraphs 26 through 49. And the thesis we came up with, or this one statement is “the desire for God is written on the human heart.” And we have three main videos, the proclamation video, which is searching for our origins. The explanation video, which is desire in the human heart. And then we have the connection video, what our desires tell us about God. So if you haven’t watched these videos yet go watch. ’cause that’ll make this make more sense.

Emily: Yes, you’ll get a lot more out of it if you’ve seen them, especially if we’re going to go into some behind the scenes and the process of why did we go in this direction with a script? It’s definitely helpful if you’ve seen what, you know, what was already in there. 

Edmund: Yeah. So first let’s talk a little bit about the proclamation video.

So what we’re trying to do with this paragraph or this section of the Catechism. So, uh, what’s beautiful about this, just to give some context, there are four pillars or parts of the catechism and, loosely, Creed, Sacraments, morality, and prayer. This one’s on the first pillar is on Creed. And it opens a little bit about the Catechism and then dive straight into man’s capacity for God. And so in this section, it’s setting up the Creed. And so we’re setting up the articles of faith with the fact that the desire for God has written on the human. Um, and we were thinking like, how do we open up this idea for people? How do we get people to be curious or spiritually curious about that idea? And so we came with this idea of, we had a pitch meeting. 

Emily: We had a pitch meeting. We got all a bunch of different writers that we know really smart, creative people and said, okay, this is the, this is what we want to be answering. What story can we tell that by the end of it, people will be asking the question that the explanation video, which is about the desires in the human heart, like the answers that the catechism has, what can, what question can, will they be asking that will, that the explanation video can answer. So we had everybody in a room to say, okay, what, based on this desires that are placed in our hearts and what these paragraphs of the, we haven’t said the paragraphs yet. What exactly are the numbers? 

Edmund: Oh yeah, paragraphs 26 through 49.

So you can open up your Catechism if you’re watching at home. 

Emily: There you go and say, okay, what, what what is stories from real life in a universal way that can we tell and we have some really great ideas. 

Edmund: Yeah. Those pitch meetings are really fun. There’s a lot of like crazy ideas that get shot down, but are just like really exciting to, to kind of like brainstorm together. And we had a few, one of them was from you, right. 

Emily: Well, again, well, there was multiple that we could bring together. We actually ended up combining two different pitch ideas into one. So one is the concept of, um, like in biology and genetic testing and fun fact that the scientist Gregor Mendel, who I remember studying in high school biology class, I think most of us have, he did like the pea plants, pea shoots and genetic testing. Uh, but he was a Catholic. He was not just Catholic. He was like the Abbot of an Augustian monk monastery, which I don’t ever remember learning. And so that was the one idea, you know, his work and what was, what was compelling him to study that work, um, and then bring us now modern genetics. And then the other side of it was, well, how’s that playing out now with people who are taking these genetic tests? It’s such a trend. Have you taken one? No, I haven’t. 

Edmund: I’ve wanted to, I know, you know, there’s ancestry.com or, you know, you talked to your parents about, you know, what are we like, where, where do we come from and where do our grandparents and great-grandparents come from. Um but no, I’ve never taken one. Have you?

Emily: I haven’t taken one, but we have had people. So our, uh, co-founder Edmundo, he took one last Christmas and he was really pumped to find out cause he loves French culture and he was pumped to find out he was 2% French. So he did that. And then also, um, our animator, JP Talty, who, um who does the animation for the proclamation video as part of the video, and you actually see some of his footage of him taking a home genetics test. Um, he found out also, you know, his genetic ancestry and he was really surprised by those results. 

Edmund: Yeah. We called him actually right before this podcast and he’s like, I just got the results of an hour ago. Yeah. And so he’s like, I don’t know.

Emily: I forget he was really surprised that he’s like 28% German. It was like majority German, even though his last name is Talty because his dad, he always thought was Irish and his mom’s from the Philippines and he’s like, oh, I’m, I’m Irish and Filipino, but he’s like, no, actually the main one is German. 

Edmund: So I think what we loved about this pitch idea was that we all are curious about this. We all have this like desire to know where we come from and our origins. And, and we’re really curious about that. And that brought us to, uh, we thought of Sonny who’s a friend that we know. Maybe you want to explain a little bit how he came in contact with Sunny. 

Emily: I met Sonny in person for the first time about a year ago. He worked for the animation studio that actually, um, worked on the Bible Project videos. And the Bible Project has been an inspiration to us for some of the work that we have for Real + True. Um, and we were, so we had a meeting with him talking through, you know, with this different kinds of storytelling, talking about the project, just kind of picking his brain about stuff, cause he’s a really good storyteller. And a man of faith and he’s, he’s just a great friend, especially of Edmundo’s, um, our other co-founder. And, um, in another story, another video here, we’ve heard him tell the story of finding his biological father through genetic testing. Um, and, and actually he had set out this he’s detailed this whole journey of going through it. And then based on the information that’s provided, like then how do you follow up with the right things. And, um, we didn’t get a chance to tell the whole story of finding his dad, um, and what that process was really like in the video, but it was really powerful to have a real life experience of, um, in a different way than Gregor Mendel kind of searching for truth. But how do you make that even more personal? 

Edmund: Yeah. 

Emily: Being compelled to find who is his biological dad, because we, he really wanted to know where did he come from? Even if his dad didn’t play a role in raising him, he did want to still know, okay. Who am I? And what does that tell me about me? 

Edmund: Yeah, it’s so interesting. What I found so fascinating was that his father hadn’t been part of his life, but there was some desire to know this. And then the truth about this person, who he then met, really changed him. And that was, that really stood out to me in there. I hope people see that there is this like spiritual dimension to that, or there’s this deeper hunger for truth that can change us in a relationship that can change us.

Even if this person wasn’t involved in his life, he like had this desire. Who, where do I come from? And it, it really touched on these spiritual themes. I mean, there was so much, I think we talked for like 45 minutes. I mean, 

Emily: Yeah, you had a long call with him, a long interview. And it’s like 32nd clips. 

Edmund: Yeah. It’s so hard. You know, we go through this script and we’re trying to pick out and we’re trying to be. 

We’re trying to be true to his story, but also trying to fit it in this small, you know, amount of time. 

Emily: Yeah our video is only like five minutes. 

Edmund: Yeah. But that was, that was awesome. His story is so powerful. And were there any other takeaways from that video about identity? I feel like, I feel like it, it does a good job of at least opening you up to this idea that there’s a spiritual dimension or hunger to our identity and where we come from. And then we have this desire. 

Emily: Yeah, I think it was really interesting. One of the things that I found interesting in the research we did for the script was that what a booming industry, this is, as soon as we had the science, where you could take a home genetics test, the demand for it is super high because we, and what does that tell us then about people that we all want to know more about where we come from? So even in JP’s case, he thought, he saw some people like Sonny who didn’t have answers, who want to know them, or in JP’s case, he thought he knew, okay, I’m Irish and Filipino but still wanted to learn more and go deeper. And then once you know that about yourself, like you said, it changes. So knowing, once you learn where you come from, that changes how you think about the rest of your life moving forward, because you’re informed by this origin. And that was like the core concept of the first video of like there’s these origin stories. And what does even beyond, even before the scientific method that Gregor Mendel used, what does our desire to create and tell origin stories to tell us about what’s written on our hearts. So what I think the video does, what we were trying to do with the video was get people to realize, okay, we’re all, we’re compelled by these origin stories where you’re using whatever tools we have, including modern genetics testing, to tell origin stories about ourselves. And so what does that mean about what, where those desires come from? And it must mean then that they’re written on our hearts as humans. 

Edmund: Yeah. I just had this image as Sonny was telling these stories that oftentimes, not all the time, but there are times where we’re tempted to think very individually. Like, uh, an individualistic idea of who I am, but even in a, in a culture or a context where you’re like really focused on yourself, you still can’t deny this reaching out to a deeper story and meaning and purpose. That’s like deeper than just you.

Emily: There’s that great visual in the video where, um, when Sonny is speaking about that, how you people have a sense that their story is about more than them. And you see like the one guy who sort of the character of the video, and then all these people on a timeline who came before him and then the people who will come after him.

And so we’re all just this one piece of a bigger story. And I think that’s a really beautiful universal, spiritual truth, which is kind of the argument of the video. 

Edmund: Also another little easter egg, JP our animator. He likes hiding little things in there and his fiance Courtney made it into the video. 

Emily: Yes. There’s a part where we’re talking about like, oh, how do we take it from nature and then apply it to science and how does it impact us now?

And so, uh, he was, he was showing, using the visual sort of story of birds and then flight and his fiance, Courtney. She is a big fan of birds. So he kind of stuck in a picture of her bird watching, which is great. 

Edmund: That’s awesome. So um, we’re trying to every podcast just kind of call out our favorite paragraphs from the section of the Catechism and the goal here is that the Catechism changes us that, that we have a response to it. And so to try to ask, you know, what is one paragraph that really stood out to us from the section, as we’re reading through it and praying through it. And we want to give a shout out to some people, I don’t know, Emily, if you want to read it.

Emily: Uh, people who responded to the first podcast where we, so we commented with our favorites. And then ask people on YouTube or any social media to comment with theirs. And so the first one is Ms. Monica Hall, uh, who paragraph five. That was her favorite one and also Diocese of Columbus. Thank you, Diocese of Columbus and paragraph four. So it’s been super exciting because the videos are meant to start these conversations about the catechism, unlock it, get people to want to open it up again. Um, and the stories that we’re telling in our scripts are all are doing that, but then it’s all meant to go back to the actual source text. And so we’re sharing our favorite paragraphs and I’d love to hear from you guys.

Edmund: Do you want to find yours in here? I have my written down. I cheated. Um, so this is kind of cheating as well because this one has the actual thesis in it and what it is my favorite, but I just wanted to talk about it because there’s more to it and we had to cut it down. But my favorite is paragraph 27. It says “the desire for God has written in the human heart because man is created by God and for God and God never ceases to draw man into Himself.”

And I love the rest of that sentence because. It’s not just that the desire for God has written on our heart, but it’s that God puts it there and never ceases to draw us to Him. And I don’t know that just that really stuck with me throughout all of our work on this section. That at every moment, it’s not just that it’s there and we can ignore it or not this active role that God plays in drawing us to Him, whether we’re Catholic or non-Catholic, we’re far from God, we’re close to God, that never, the God never ceases to draw us. And I, I even thought, you know, Mother Teresa, from my perception, it seemed like Mother Teresa or some of these other saints are really close to God. And the idea that God would still draw them, that, that you can’t get away from that, that God’s constantly drawing us with our, with this desire He’s putting in our heart. And even if we feel far from God, that God is still drawing us closer to Him. That really stood out to me.

Emily: I love that too, because it’s not, He’s not putting it on your hearts for the sake of it just being there for you to unlock, like it’s there. And because He wants to use that desire to have that connection to draws closer and is using different things and about your own human nature and in the world to do that, which kind of leads into my favorite. So mine is, um, 32, paragraph 32, um, it’s kind of a long one so I’ll just do the short part “The, the world starting from movement, becoming, contingency and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to know a, to come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.” So what I really loved about that is that, I mean, if you’ve ever been driving down the road and you kind of like, see the sun, like peaking through the clouds, or you can, when you’re watching a beautiful sunset or there’s so many examples of like where I, I felt like, oh, I feel like God’s real because of what I’m seeing, just in nature. Well, I mean, I’m sure there’s literally billions of people in the world who would say that is not proof for God’s existence, which like fair. You can’t just look at sunlight coming through the clouds and be like, therefore God exists. But I felt like that paragraph of the Catechism was affirming of like that feeling on my heart, that I’ve always had at different moments where God is revealing Himself to us through nature. He is using that like the drawing man to Himself. He’s drawing us to Him through that beauty of the natural world and the order of the natural world. And so I really loved that the Catechism was affirming that that is a way God’s drawing us to Him.

Edmund: I love, again, like the Catechism, the way it’s structured and what they’re trying to do to set up the creed is not to just say, here’s what you need to believe. But to say it’s reasonable to believe like it, like it’s in our hearts, it’s in the world and it’s reasonable. Uh, not that it’s obvious, but it is reasonable because we can see these desires in our hearts and it makes sense to have faith. 

Emily: Yeah, well, and this whole section that we’re covering in unit two, now, unit three, we’ll get into more of like that divine revelation stuff. But in this section, it really is focusing on all the things, using reason alone. What are all the ways that we can come to know God and to love Him? 

Edmund: Yeah. Like JPII says, um, you know, faith and reason are like two wings on a dove that you kind of ascend up into heaven with. So they’re not opposed to each other. Faith and reason aren’t opposed. So let’s move on to the connection video or, well, the explanation video, really dives, deeper into desire in the human heart. And there’s some really. Actually one of the toughest things about the explanation videos are trying to um, was it like show really abstract concepts. 

Emily: How do you show the desire for truth, for example. 

Edmund: And that was something we went back and forth a lot with the little circles and like the heart. And how do we show…

Emily: There’s like a puzzle piece for the proofs of God.

Edmund: Yeah. So I love those things. Like if you go back and watch. That’s another thing that we wanted to share with you guys that is really fun for us is how do we depict stuff that’s theologically accurate, but also is intuitive and you can understand. So that’s been really fun. 

Emily: Well, it’s interesting. The videos there’s a lot going on, right? There’s the script, there’s the visuals. And we, we want it to all build together and work together and really be complex. We don’t ever want it to just be like a visual representation of the concept that we’re talking about, we want it to, like, build and visual storytelling, just as much as the script is explaining those concepts. So that’s something we’re learning and getting better at as these units go on. 

Edmund: Yeah. Because you know, with all of these things, there’s the intellect, but there’s also the heart and intellectually, there’s a script, but also there’s like this emotional reaction or the heart piece of seeing these things and being moved by beautiful images. And it makes sense, you know? 

Emily: Yeah. And the score, my, one of my favorites that we’ve been working on and, um, we did a little, or JP did a little like Instagram takeover for the Catholic Creatives in which he was, um, highlighting different, uh, sections of the music that plays underneath the videos. Um, and that, that the composer he titles, each of them there’s like, is that emotion put into it?

And it’s really fun. There’s like, I think the one he shared with like questioning or something questioning #2. 

Edmund: Yeah. I love that. So let’s move on. The connection video tries to unpack the argument from desire for God. And… 

Emily: In real life based on our like, okay, let’s stop talking about the abstract desire for truth and love, but like when you have desires in real life, what does that look like?

Edmund: Yeah. And that was fun. Um, it’s a fun video. It’s the connection video. So it’s live action and it’s it’s me and, um, you know, we have a great team that’s helping me, uh, shoot these videos and also Emily helping me give a good examples of desires. Yeah. I didn’t have super great, like one version of the script I did it and I didn’t have great examples. Then Emily… 

Emily: I was like, we need to like bring it down to actual daily life. And I was like, so like I have, I have a desire and I like have happiness or what the, from eating an ice cream sandwich. And then you snuck that into the video.

Edmund: Uh I, yeah, I just literally said like ice cream sandwiches. Who eats ice cream sandwiches every day?

Emily: I actually do eat ice cream sandwiches almost every… There’s like these little brands that are like vegan little, a hundred calorie. It’s my dessert every day after dinner. 

Edmund: Yeah. Yeah. You know, what’s funny now that I’m now that you mention it. My mom actually also eats ice cream sandwiches every day.

Emily: It’s universal, universal. 

Edmund: You get your dairy. Also, what was fun about the connection video was, uh, my daughter, I had to watch my daughter throughout the production that production day. So my daughter, there, maybe we could share some photos or something, but there’s photos of my daughter, like holding a clipboard and we’re all like trying to shoot the video. 

Emily: Production assistant.

Edmund: Um, so we didn’t get, like it’s hard in a short video like that to unpack a philosophical argument. But, but the, the basis of it is that we have these innate desires that all correspond to an object that we can satisfy. And that’s why it’s like food, hunger, sleep. But then we have these deeper desires, which nothing in time or in our life can fully satisfy completely. So therefore we can conclude that something must exist, that can des… that can satisfy that. And that’s something is God. 

Emily: Right. Well, and we, we are made for this infinite desire. And then depending on, you know, what desire is being fulfilled, like you use the example in the video, like when you’re hungry and then you have French fries thrown at your face, and then you’re not hungry for a while, and then you’re hungry again. And then even when we take it deeper than that, even when you have a moment like of looking at the most beautiful sunset that you’ve ever seen, and then you still wake up the next day and like, want, need more beauty in your life. And so why do we have this infinite longing? We’re finite beings. So there has to be something more to that infinite longing that’s more than just, you know, our biological human self. 

Edmund: Yeah. And again, the Catechism is not saying, oh, this is obvious or, but it’s setting up the reasonableness of belief in God. And in the articles of faith, like it is reasonable. You can come to that, uh, conclusion by looking around at the world.

Emily: Well, like Catechism provides answers to those seemingly unanswerable questions, but that you talk about that more in the connection video for the first unit, but the Catechism is, if you’re wondering, why do I have these infinite longings? Why is it that after I can have the happiest day of my life, I still wake up the next day, wanting more happiness? And the Catechism is offering through the lens of faith through the truth of our faith and answer to that question. 

Edmund: And, um, oh, also there’s a bunch of drone footage that did not make it into this video. 

Emily: We tried. So, so we were coming, we have a lot of fun that we go, we get really go deep into the scripts. We get very inspired, it’s a fun process. And so we, you were really inspired by a JPII quote, they like this has to be in it. And we were trying to figure out how to find the video. So, uh, some of the original cuts, um, maybe we can show some of this in the podcast too. 

Edmund: We’re flying a drone through the picture frame, and then up over the lake and stuff.

Emily: And there’s like beautiful lake footage, like inspirational music. And then this like JPII quote that comes to screen. But in the end it was like maybe a little too much because we never want to force it. We want people to like, and for people who are maybe sh, sharing this video with a friend, who’s asking these questions, people who might be using this to do catechesis in a way, like, we don’t want to like, have that, you know, emotional moment tacked on the end. We want people to kind of arrive at it at their own terms. 

Edmund: Yeah. Uh, I remember maybe I could share this story there. Um, there was this famous theologian, uh, Balthasar and Pope Benedict when he was, I think he was just like a theologian. He wrote this really long, uh, paper and he sent it to Balthasar to get feedback and Balthasar, you know, wasn’t known for giving much feedback or ever really responding or whatever. So he wasn’t sure if he would get a response and it’s just like long, um, theological paper that he had written and Balthasar just wrote back one kind of note card that said, um, “Propose don’t presuppose.” Oh, and so Benedict in, I think a book called, uh, um, Gospel Catechesis, uh, it doesn’t really matter,

Emily: We’ll put it in the show notes. 

Edmund: Yeah, but Benedict writes how, um, it really changed his perspective on how to present the faith. That we can’t presuppose that people have faith or a capacity for faith or that even know what faith is. Um, we have to propose it and show the reasonableness, and I hope people can see that the Catechism’s teaching us that before we go in with, um, God exists and you should believe in him, 

Emily: Here’s the proofs for Him or whatever. 

Edmund: Setting up the desires, like let’s look at the desires in your heart and show that it is reasonable for us to get to that point that it’s reasonable to believe in God. And that faith is already in you somewhere that the capacity for it is in you.

Emily: Back to the thesis full circle, that God, God put this desire in all human hearts so that when you’re going through life and questioning these things and discovering answers through the truth of the catechi, the deposit of faith that the catechism contains that it resonates with you. It’s not meant to just be like, we’re going to teach you how to memorize this and to know the truth, or know how to say here’s where you can find God. It’s, we want it to feel like the fulfillment of all of those questionings and longings that we have inside of us. 

Edmund: Yeah. I love that. Well, we can start wrapping up here. If you have, we’ve loved the response to unit one and all the videos it’s been really great, like reading people’s comments and 

Emily: Hearing how they’re using it. We’ve had people say, oh, we’re going to use this in RCIA now. And things like that. And that’s been really exciting to see. 

Edmund: Yeah, that’s been really cool. So if you, you know, we would encourage you to go watch these videos and engage with them and, you know, comment and, you know, let’s have discussions about them. 

Emily: And tell us how you’re using them and tell us how you like you see this being used in the setting of ministry that people are leading or the, how you would send it to a friend who’s asking these questions. I think that’s, what’s most exciting for us to hear.

Edmund: Yeah, that’s really exciting. Um, we just want to remind you about the mission of Real + True. Emily, how do you, uh, explain the mission of Real + True? 

Emily: So if you’re just learning this now at the end of the podcast, we are creating different videos and we have social media content. So you can follow us on all social media platforms @realplustrue except for Instagram, it’s @real_plus_true. Uh, but you can find us on all of those to see the content from each of the videos, uh, bonus clips, behind the scenes, extra quotes from the con from the catechism. Cause you can’t fit, you know, every word into the, to the video. So kind of taking it deeper. You can follow us, you can sign up for our newsletter. That’s the best way to stay in the know about video releases or any other exciting things going on. Um, and we really just want to invite you to unlock the Catechism with us. I mean, the videos are all here to, you know, transform this into a living voice for the modern world, but point people back to the Catechism, which points to it’s pulsating heart, which is Jesus.

Edmund: Yeah. It’s been so cool. Especially part of this project, the video is being translated into French, Portuguese and Spanish. And when you share this project, I mean, you’re helping this stuff get out to the world for free. Um, so you had just joining the mission is really appreciated. Yeah, well, we’re excited for the next unit to come out and we will not see you guys, but we will talk to you guys through the cameras soon. So thanks everybody. Bye. 

Emily: Thanks. Bye.