ASM185 William Matthews

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[Music] welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith in life only this week i'm not answering any questions at all we're talking with my dear friend william matthews about art and advocacy and how to make a real difference in the world so what do you say let's get it started [Music] [Applause] well i am like un reasonably excited because for the first time ever on at science mike we have got one of my best friends in the entire world william matthews on dude thanks for doing this oh thanks for asking me i mean this this podcast is kind of legendary so i was really surprised when you asked me i was like wait what i'm going to be ask science mike is this ask william matthews it is this is me asking william matthews about um life man i you know yeah i i'm i'm going to jump right into it actually no a life update first on me um because i don't want too much time to pass i still don't really know how to articulate this um but uh i've had a rough rough year with my family and william knows all about this if you guys think you know what's going on uh william william definitely knows what's going on in my life um we've had some significant challenges uh with healthcare in my family i've had some issues that were expensive got through them then a family member whose story is not mind to tell faced a life-threatening disorder and uh that treatment was very expensive and is ongoing and then i went to the hospital with chest pains um and was diagnosed with a particular type of heart disease called pericarditis which i am treating and is going well but sent such a massive hospital bill that there was no way to pay for the ongoing care that my family needs pay the debt we've built up providing care for me and my family and handle these new hospital bills [Music] and you know hillary and michael hillary mcbride liturgist podcast michael gunger allergies podcast and my friend caroline lee had all said they wanted to help and do a gofundme and i had pushed that off as long as i could because if there's anything still in me of white supremacy and the patriarchy it is that i am self-sufficient and that i should not need the help of others so confronting the idea of a go front of me it made me feel one like i was asking for support from people who already support me there are literally thousands of patrons for ass science mike and the liturgist podcast and that i had failed at a as a husband and a father and because hillary is uh very polite and kind she would she would defer temporarily on me pushing back and um michael basically said he'll never agree to this so let's just launch it on his birthday yeah that's that's what was amazing because i was like i don't know why they even asked you but because i'm very much like i'm not a good fundraiser in that way what is that oh yeah i'm not a good fundraiser in that way like i i would asked you and then you said no i don't want to do it i'm like okay i can't make somebody it's very like i mean it's an oprah principle you know you can't force anyone to do something they don't want to do so but i i am i love that they pushed past your uh barriers and your boundaries there to create an opportunity for people just to show you how much they love you i think that was what it was about it does not speak to your inability to provide or your masculinity to be able to receive support when you need it it sucks to me and you you would agree with this it sucks to me that we live in a situation where we have to run a gofundme to pay for somebody's healthcare situation i know so many of us have given two gofundmes for people's medical needs just in the last five years because of how terrible our system is so that's not representative on you to me or uh your driving your work ethic and your ability to like i said to provide for family it just is about love it's about people showing love to you and people expressing through monetary means like to show that love to you and i'm glad that they did it was amazing i mean to give you some idea of what my head space was like june 27th i woke up checked our bank balance realized there was enough not enough money in the account to pay our rent and would not be enough money in our account to pay our rent by the time it was due so i kind of thought well this is it this is the end of the road it's time to miss rent start the eviction process i have a lot to explain to my family and my children and um wow and then hillary texted me and said like what was the name of your heart condition so i told her and then uh really late in the day hillary and michael texted me and jenny's heads up your gofundme launches tomorrow and uh i didn't have rent money so i didn't protest and i just want to say to all of you who will raise 50 000 in 20 30 something hours um thank you i'll never be able to tell you what it means to me and to my family there will never be words that are sufficient um but for a long time you've enabled my work with your generosity but in this case you didn't just enable the work you rescued my family yeah and um yeah i'll i changed my facebook profile picture to uh the scene and it's a wonderful life where the community like raises the money to cover uh the problem with the savings and loan um and becoming like a podcaster and an author has really been like a financial disaster for my family compared to my previous career in advertising but as i evaluate the relational impact of this phase of my life i realized i i am in fact the richest man in town um thank you thank you all um but enough about me it feels weird to go into that on an episode about william i just couldn't i couldn't wait anymore i couldn't wait anymore because what i really want to talk about every time i read a bio of you by the way do you know how popular you are william relative you're a popular dude i was as i do as a hobby screwing around on google trends recently a lot of people look for you on google they do yeah like a lot a lot what does that mean it means how often people open google.com and type william matthews is very frequently wow i don't know what they're finding but uh your website your tour schedule a lot of your bethel music yeah shows up on our search for your name uh a lot of youtube clips oh yeah i forget about that stuff yeah i actually do actually forget that there and it's funny because what's on youtube now was not always or there was other stuff on youtube a lot got taken down um but that's what helped popularize my music was youtube i mean there there was a whole farm industry of people taking video clips of me singing at a church and throwing them on youtube and they were getting millions and millions and millions of views there's still a few left but a lot of them have been deleted but uh yeah i think people are still probably searching for that yeah well you're at this like nexus of identities and experiences you have like this this i i'd call it maybe prior work yeah that was more in the charismatic movement and then you have your your contemporary work that is in justice and intersectional spirituality i like that phrase intersectional spirituality yeah it's you thank you and every time i read a bio about you online and i've read a lot because i end up having like write bios about you for our website or for episodes um you have a lot of bios there's a lot in them but one thing that always seems to come up is art or artist and advocacy and advocate and i got so fascinated with those two things living and balanced together so i'm curious i guess i'm curious about your journey into becoming an artist and becoming an advocate and what that sequence was like and where does that begin is that like when you're four is it when you're 14 what did that look like well i guess i'll start a little bit with my deconstruction and maybe move backwards actually okay great um so as you mentioned i was a popular charismatic worship leader traveled the world or as they say in charismatic land the nations i went to the nations lord send me i will go um i went to the nations and i wrote songs and they were put on albums and they just boomeranged across the world and i was identified as a worship leader william matthews worship leader and it's funny because i pursued that as a career option i said you know i want to be a worshiper i love music and i love god and spirituality so let me put myself in uh churches and ministries that have like burgeoning worship movements and so i spent a time as an intern uh with a choir of the fire when i was in my early 20s which is where i first heard of michael gunger um and then fast forward went through a number of different minister prophetic revival ministry movements um and wound up at bethel music and got signed to a record deal and we launched the bethlehem music lab i was the first artist signed to that label and so i was a worship leader i was known as the worship leader and when i began to deconstruct my faith and for me i think what that looked like i had gone through many deconstructions in my life but as a worship leader traveling the world i find it difficult to have the experiences that you have while traveling the world and not weigh cosmic questions whether it's questions about climate change or it's questions about people outside of your faith right because especially when your faith as a charismatic person is predicated on this notion of revival and everyone's going to come to jesus and get saved and then you're actually traveling the world and meeting people who know jesus or don't know jesus and you start to just recognize the humanity and dignity in everyone that really forced a reckoning with my theology what do i think about the other what do i think about those people and so my deconstruction really centered around who am i how do i relate to the world and i think it's bigger than my charismatic experience he's telling me and my theology that's given to me in that so after i left my record label i really was struggling with the idea should i continue music because when you've toured the world and you've performed in front of arenas and 20 000 plus people at a time like i've done big festivals i've done i've been in arena i've been to asia i've been to south africa i've been to australia a bunch you know when you have that experience you don't usually get a second shot at that so i was really deciding whether i should continue to do music and the idea of me being a worship leader just didn't feel like the right path forward i just didn't have a passion anymore for worship music but i'd always known at my core i was an artist and i cared about people and for me it wasn't even enough to be an artist i could easily just say well i'm going to be an artist and i'm just going to focus on myself and there was something actually about that that felt really empty in vain early on as i was thinking about becoming solely just a recording artist not a worship leader i'm a recording artist i'm a songwriter i'm an artist there's something in my ministry experience that i loved which was movement and care for people and care for justice and so for me the artist and advocacy thing was me trying to hold in both of my hands two realities that have always defined my life my love of art and music and culture and my love for people and and love is what justice looks like in public west says you know so how do i so when i thought about it artist and advocacy or artist and advocate became kind of like two pillars like if i was to root my life on anything it became that but when i go back in the course of my life that was given to me from my family my grandfather was a minister my dad was a minister i grew up in the church i saw the marrying of music community and justice like whether it was feeding people um the homeless out of our church in soup kitchens or my mother offering a writing grants and getting major money to um offer free camp for low-income families in raleigh north carolina i mean where she was running a camp of over 500 kids low-income kids in raleigh and i mean director grant writer like i my parents married their love of jesus with their love for people in very tangible ways and gave personally the compassionate service was part of it but also my family had a real strong advocacy bet which there's a difference and i don't think people understand the difference between compassion and service and advocacy compassion and service fix fixes a need um which is so let's use you for example science mike uh you had medical bills that were stacking up and so people rallied in compassionate service to say let's fix this one individual problem we have the power to do that so let's do that beautiful powerful but like i said earlier we live in a system that puts so much debt on you for having medical bills and that that's an advocacy issue that's an institutional issue and so so for me i love the bent towards or compassionate service we need more of that absolutely but what will fix a lot of the problems that we face in our society will be a focus on advocacy how do we foundationally structurally change institutions and systems to benefit the most amount of people and also to end any type of disparities that exist through gender race uh class sexual orientation so for me it wasn't simply about me being somebody that was going to be a given to compassionate service which is powerful but for me it's like i want to attack advocacy because we don't talk enough about collective responsibility and i feel like that's the hardest one often for us to really understand and get behind so for me i felt like i watched the marrying of compassionate service on the ground soup kitchen married with how can we create political policies to uh benefit the poor in our city like i felt like i watched my family do that so that's to me what artists advocate or artistry and advocacy means as to um two things i'm constantly wrestling in between and sometimes i feel a little bit more art bent and then sometimes i get a little bit more advocacy a bit yeah and it's i feel like it's a it's a tension and a wrestle that i'm always um holding in both hands both things when did you fall in love with music i would say my mother helped me fall in love with music my mother was a choir director and so i grew up watching my mother lead the choir thursday night choir rehearsals those were like i know we play with the other kids and uh i fell in love with music doing i was in the children's choir y'all was in teenage choir mass choir there's so many different choirs in the black church and that's where i fell in love with music was my mother helped me um use music to express myself and then i also took marching band and concert band in middle school in high school i played the alto sax and so i just fell in love with classical music and all the um composers you know all the old dead white composers that we all learn you know and and i took my love of music from the black church got expanded through classical music and so and i began even in my teenage years discovering i i i was the guy that was buying music from any genre i was listening to pop music i was listening to rock i was listening to punk rock i was listening to metal i was listening to i was listening to so much different music by my teenage years r b and hip hop of course were flourishing in the 90s that uh yeah my love of music was always central to my personal expression um this has nothing to do with what you said okay we'll just come back to what you had to say because we got to keep the lights on for a second for science mike uh although i get pretty excited about it because i'm lucky that when we have sponsors on science mic it's always stuff i've actually used and believe in and the sponsor for this episode is a company called kiwi co and if you haven't heard of kiwi co they are a company that creates these handcrafted kind of learning kits called a crate that your children get in the mail every month they're themed around science technology engineering arts and math they have multiple crates that are age appropriate for children of all ages into their teen years and as kids get older and more advanced you can choose between different tracks between a more math and science focus or a more art focus it's a really incredible product i got home from the first two stops of tabs and wafers and there was a robot walking across our kitchen table which was really really cool that macy had built and then i got home from our second stop uh of tabs and wafers and uh you know walked in and and there was a planetarium on in macy's rooms and she was looking at the stars inside the amazing thing was she had built and understood those things started with a plan and then customized them herself by understanding the underlying scientific and engineering principles kiwi co is amazing it makes learning fun it gets kids away from the screen and lets them really learn in a way that is not just fun but also strengthens their core understanding that improves their performance in school yes but also in life i can't recommend it enough and kiwi co will give you a crate absolutely free just for being a listener about science mike just go to kiwico.com science to learn more and sign up for your completely free crate from kiwico i want a crate they're awesome i can give you one they ship them to me all the time thank you they always ship them to me and what they don't realize is i actually signed up and paid for it myself so then we just get like extra crates so absolutely they i get jealous of the kids they look so fun oh um i guess i could sign up for like a grown-up just get my own kiwi crates uh okay so back to the show um you said advocacy and compassionate care compassion intention what was the word you used i use service but yeah service no it's really good there's a there's a stark game we we convince people that they are doing advocacy when in fact they're mostly doing compassionate service and i think the mislabeling and the misunderstanding of what advocacy actually is will help us really deal with some deep systemic issues that are going on in our particularly in america and our culture or any culture in general um how do we be advocates for the marginalized the poor the oppressed um how do we become better and no matter what social location you identify i think that's the question we're asking who are the most marginalized um into what ratio and scale and then how do we fix systems of power to begin to address those things yeah um because it takes institutions to um and and people that coalesce or in groups i would call that an institution too like even relational institutions um how do we fix social problems in fixed institutions it takes that type of that type of collective organizing mobilizing and energy and that's kind of what i'm i'm more interested in as a artist is how do i use art to communicate ideas that will help mobilize us towards collective wholeness health well-being goodness and that to me is very much informed for my christian faith something people that listen to the liturgist podcast may not know about you and that i only know about you from watching you i've never heard you talk about this is your training in the arts and advocacy began in the black church yes and then your public work grew and blossomed primarily in the white church yes your advocacy bloomed in faith-based advocacy organizations and non-religious advocacy organizations so you have this fascinating thing for me where you are native and fluent to the black church so immersed in the white church that you understand the culture and you understand the norms and you understand the problems with the white church you've done advocacy including around the world and at the u.s capitol with faith-based institutions and you've done the same with advocacy organizations that are not faith-based that gives you a really really unique perspective to have been so deeply involved in those worlds don't usually like mix right no that's what makes me a threat mike this is why some people are out to get me but that's what that's my point that's what i want i would love it if you just take a second okay and talk about what you think those four groups could learn from each other because they're all doing work but they're all you know like the white church can be very afraid of advocacy it's a little more comfortable with compassionate service like well the white church can be comfortable like advocating bad things yes yes i rolled my eyes when he said it because i was like i was making advocacy towards the goal of good yeah the white church lately frankly for me growing up in the evangelical church which used to be wildly nonpartisan it's actually terrified me how fast they've become entrenched in republican advocacy basically but what with that out on the table and not out of bounds you know me god i'm not afraid of a tough conversation but what what learnings could those groups have from each other because you're in a mall you understand them all i understand people out to get you it is because you are a real threat um you really are you have an incredible capacity to open people's eyes to things and to get people to listen and to drive them to action so wow and he just drew four quadrants in his on his paper he's like now list them out right now wow thank you for saying that i i don't think very many people have seen that circular transition so to speak um [Music] my experience in the black church is one of beauty of safety of embodiment of music and celebration of each other and the gifts god has put inside of us unashamedly it is powerful deep resistance to anything that tries to define your identity especially anything that is causing harm in the mainstream society or white supremacy deep deep deep resistance um it is insular it is very for itself which is i believe healthy and in the society that we live in for the black church to be that way it has been a refuge and a safety from racial terror and threat um and a place where black people can be respected and give honor and dignity to each other that is that is what the black church has if the black church can learn anything from the white church i think it is well let me let me start let me go to the white church yeah that's about that's probably easier i'm sorry listen i know a lot of you most of you listening are white i'm white too i don't think there's anything wrong that we were born white but i do think us holding on to our whiteness causes great great ill in society you may not agree with me and if if you feel a tightness in your chest or your body as we talk about whiteness in the white church i would just ask you to pay attention to that tightness and look for where it comes from while we continue this conversation i'm glad you gave that psa because i would never do that i was gonna actually say something very positive oh wow i think the white church has a capacity to mobilize and organize like i've never seen i think they're very invested in their interests and how those interests deserve to be played out in the public square i think that's actually a good instinct i think um american christianity knows that influence is real and they also know how to use media platforms to convey their message wow um they're very intentional about empowering youth in order to do so and to the point of actually giving money and and leveraging lots of money to believe in youth now granted you could argue uh a lot of that wealth is generational through the the labor of black and brown people and that that would be a proper critique um but regardless what they have what they do have they are able to leverage for the sake of their message to mobilize people to get the word out and to create alternative institutions the white church in this country has created its own insular bubble um and has created its own alternative community and what they have done is they have now made their alternative community they have given it now real political power and i if all things being equal and they're not but if i were to say all things were equal i would say that's kind of badass truthfully um if it weren't for the incredible cost to people outside of that bubble absolutely yeah and that's why it's not actually equated and it and so in one sense i can like praise how badass of a move that is and i can also go and yet what did you leverage it for what did you leverage wow and that's the deep pain and the deep uh anger and the brokenness uh in the current uh situation also okay so let's move forward and then i'll i'll tell you how they can relate um i've done work like you said with faith-based advocacy advocacy groups i've done it with a group formerly known as micah challenge i've done which is now kind of more morphed into tier fund i've done work with tier fund i've also which is more known globally i've done work as well with uh more secular organizations like color of change and a few other different groups purpose and and some others and one of the things i think i find in the world is a what i call the world because i grew up in the church i said the world you know those people in the world because you know we're different we're the saved sanctified redeemed holy ghost filled baptized in water and fire oh man um one of the things i find with non-religious based organizations is i do find like a sense of fair like a desire for a sense of fairness and equity and also like a real humility to know that they're part of something greater believe this or not like i actually feel like the organizations that i've worked for that are non-religious carry a type of humility about them and they understand that that society is separated in different groups that they're not naturally ingrained in like i think people in the world have a great respect for institutions of like the church actually they're not they're not antagonistic intentionally like towards them i've found um i think they just have a common purpose right around whatever their advocacy campaign is whether it's climate change or or ending racial justice if they're even if they're not using a faith lens to it they are looking for the common good of all people i really believe that um so now going to how all those interrelate i think if the black church had one thing to learn from the white church it would be mobilize and organize for your own political purposes and gain and we do it but we don't the black church doesn't do it to the level that it could i think the black church has been more co-opted unfortunately by the prosperity gospel and by a sense of hyper-individualized personal wealth and attainment but that's very appealing if you're coming from a marginalized group that this notion that god wants to make you a millionaire or that like you know and or to believe in that kind of like divine magic so to speak that you know with some prayer and some faith you can you can become wealthy um and the white church has engaged in that too very much so um but in the black church i feel like it definitely there is a stronghold there um and because if the prosperity gospel would have worked my parents would be millionaires by them yeah and they're not so there has to be ownership i think the older black generation has to own with that even in the white church the prosperity gospel is far more resonant with the economically disenfranchised oh yeah and say it is with churches that have more historic wealth yeah and the churches that do know that they're run by the wealthy people in their congregation they know the oil tycoon you know in texas really speaks into not just like building policy with their local church and what to build and how big the sanctuary they're speaking into theology right they're having like discussions back in closed doors now one thing i noticed in the white church was there was there's almost this like there is this worship of wealth and influence and wanting it for you know the message of the gospel but i often think they co-opt themselves to the political purposes of the republican party um solely and and the the political interests of corporations and big business and and people because i think they want to attain that kind of wealth too and if there's one thing i think the white church can learn from the black church it is not only physical embodiment in in everything you do not just music and worship and praise but also a sense of connectivity of heart mind and gut wow um i think that is something that black people intrinsically have that i think white people can really learn from um and i don't even like to use the term white people uh because who's white i don't even understand that but um so i i would say that and then i think both the black church and the white church can learn from the world to recognize they are simply a insular bubble a part of a greater bubble wow and they are a part they are a vital part i would say all of it is vital um and if i were to use roar language richard rohr everything belongs like it all belongs uh the question is how does your belonging interact with other people's belongings and i i think how to and you don't get to that answer until you actually sit with those people have radical hospitality love on those people and let your bubble wrestle up against their bubble and and that something in you begins to change because if you're pro-life and not having conversations with pro-choice people then how do you ever really understand how someone can be deeply committed to morality the same like you but also be pro-choice you'll never really understand that you'll just label them as baby killers um and also for for for the black church if you don't get out of your bubble to interact and and i'll make this qualification uh black people have a lot of racial trauma connected to their relationships with white people so there is right there is a lot of things there that that are legitimate a lot of legitimate rage and anger um and prejudice that is very legitimate um but at the same time it is good for black people not to simply live in an all-black world and to only have black friends and to be in situations where now maybe in their work scenario they have to do that but to actually build relationship deep meaningful vulnerable relationships with people of the opposite uh race from you i think it's just healthy for any human being regardless of the racial trauma and terror and i'm not sidelining it i'm actually saying in the face of that i think it's really badass to cross racial lines and actually learn to love people different from you even people that have maybe been complicit in your oppression again not demanding it i won't do that to black people to do that because they get to choose for themselves and i understand when people don't so yeah and i think the world needs to learn that uh you can't divorce reality from metaphor particularly religious metaphor i think it matters and it works and there's something about that type of storytelling in the church that the world really could i think hollywood gets it but i don't think the world does in terms of how to yeah they're they distance from religion in order to be seem objective and fair but actually i think you need to use religion in order to see the world rightly man that was a lot i felt like i just had a long run on sentence well just so we're clear the entire purpose of this recording is to have you speak and for people to hear your thoughts um you know this you get tired of your own voice though sometimes i do get very tired of my own voice so i understand it but that was all beautiful and necessary you know i was as you were talking i was kind of reflecting on on how i felt in response to what you were saying and um gosh this notion of the racial trauma that people of color and especially black people experience and the way that shows up even in like how you choose your friends and who you spend time with um i've been on a a progression of attempting to increase my awareness and sensitivity to issues of race and racism in america and around the world for several years now yeah and i'm just the last year or so getting to the point where sometimes i can hear and wince at things white people say to black friends and don't think about it and aren't aware of the trauma that it invokes or brings out um can i can i make a correction to something i just said i realized any time i realized i made an over emphasis on uh black people becoming friends with white people when statistically speaking the real problem is the reverse um it's more it's more important for it's more problematic that white people don't have black friends yes um or substantial deep relationships but the last poll i saw was in 2016 i think through ppri or uh barna that said that at least with white evangelicals 75 of them had did not have a significant relationship with a person of color completely where i you see it is far more common for black people to have more multicultural friends so i just want to correct myself by saying me saying that was not to make that to be the problem or the the root of issues of racism in this country i was simply encouraging the few black people that are resistant to relationships with people outside of their own race that it's okay to get outside of your your own race and to have those conversations but by and large the problem is actually the reverse william i love the combination of wisdom and sensitivity you have oh like to think in the moment it's difficult talking in a microphone all the time i mean if you think about how often we have to share thoughts it's easy to say things sometimes unintentionally with great intentions that hurt people but the maturity i see for you to immediately say wait i recognize that i saw some impact and to own it yeah gosh that's laudable thank you i wish more people would do it a lot of fights and debates and being proven wrong have uh helped formed that humility yeah um but also like me throwing myself in situations other where i've had to learn i've had to always be the constant student whether it's me being um like when even i was i am black and i'm being in a black church i didn't fully feel like i fit in in the black church and then i went to the white church and i didn't fully feel like i fit in there i've never really fully fit in my whole life to any grouping that i've ever been in or felt like that total sense of uh 100 complete safety i don't maybe no one has maybe people to greater degrees so for me i've always thrown myself in very opposite polar environments to learn to push something different out of myself and so all the environments i've been in whether it's secular environments christian environments black white whatever um i've always had to learn how to find common ground and also learn to be critiqued and learn to like take feedback and to say hey no you're thinking wrong about that and to say well tell me how and really have my ideas rub up against other people's ideas and i'll always say yes to an idea that i've never heard of first before i say no that's my general disposition unless i've already thought through that extensively then i'll say hell no but if yours tell me something i've never heard before i'll go huh tell me more really huh that's interesting i'm struggling here's why i'm struggling but yeah tell me more so no matter what scenario i've been in that's always what i've done so that's i don't know so i as i was hearing myself and thinking of what i just said i was like you know what that's not accurate and that doesn't i don't think the data supports it but also i think i was placing too much onus in the weight of my conversation which matters the context is part of the message yeah because they're going to be people that would walk away from what i just said and felt like i was like telling black people to get their [ \_\_ ] together and without pointing out the real problem that's actually happening which is white people not having significant relationships with black people um it's not an equal weighted issue by by and large yeah and white people if you think you chose that this is why we talk about systemic and personal racism yeah like the structure of society uh is in many ways architected to keep white communities insular yeah land land is very racialized especially in our country it is you cannot explore there's there are people like political scientists who've done work to determine based on the soil of the land you live in will determine how you vote like chris hayes on his podcast had had these two political scientists uh and geologists come through and talk about it like soil is connected to policy and connected land is connected to people and connected to groups of people and how they move and migrations and i mean you know more about this literally than i do that's why your name is science mike so i feel like i'm preaching to the choir and probably not doing it as great of a job as you would but um i do think one of the products of our white supremacist society or the after effects of colonialism are that we've been reduced to products and we've been reduced to consumers and when you're reduced in that type of capitalistic structure it's easy to uh create classes structures and to move people around and to you know that's the whole thing with gentrification which some would argue right it's natural that it's a natural progression but i think in this country it is very intentional to to move out those people get these people because they're of higher stock higher value and uh i think as a person of faith the gospel is so radical to call these this [ \_\_ ] out and i i don't think we have contextualized faith in a way that really describes public policy in the here and now and i think that's what i'm really interested in and passionate about is helping people make the connection between the message of jesus and radical inclusion love and and and breaking of the hierarchies and the class structures and the race structures to say you are loved you are present you have human dignity and worth and value and you're of the divine and to say all right now that that's true how do how do we then organize society how do we how do we take care of the land and take care of the poor and and heal the planet and really begin to cultivate wholeness and health and wellness for um all people not just some people so you're saying that and uh i literally hear tracks from cosmos in my head yeah right like how much did this mix of your different life experiences and the different places that you've committed advocacy influence and shape how cosmos came to be so the word cosmos is representative of our cosmos cosmos can be like my body is its own cosmos meaning it's its own ecosystem my social relationships are a cosmos my city is a type of cosmos my country is a cosmos my planet is a cosmos and so me touring the world and just and i know a lot of people that tour the world and they're still like exclusionist right or bigots or racist or sexist um i toured the world with my heart open i toured the world wanting to learn i toured the world wanting to see not just the physical planet but also see the many different the the seven billion different ways we're all human and and also the seven billion ways we're we're we all have commonality both and and so cosmos for me was about pushing my spirituality the record he's talking about the album i just came out with um cosmos was about pushing my spirituality past the limitations that the christian faith placed on me and i started asking cosmic questions about myself and about my relationship to the world also questions about our relationship um as americans in particular in the black and white issue and our latinx people like what is our and the natives like our what is our collective cosmos and i wanted to wrestle with it as best as i could in a 48 minute spiritual pop album format and just describe the interior journey of the heart the interior cosmos representing the external cosmos and that's kind of existentially what that uh album is about to some people it comes across as like a blatantly blatant attempt to do corporate worship and pop music at the same time uh for me it very much was my attempt to blend all the worlds that i was a part of in this weird pot and that's what came out was cosmos what has surprised you about the reception to the record the which is to be expected the many different types of people that vibe with the wrecker you have people who are like i don't identify as christian anymore but that record just does something to my heart the people that are still very much christian and goes that that brings language to my spiritual journey and my own doubts and questions um i think that just the response of people um like somebody told me that i kind of had a little bit of an anxiety attack last night and somebody i was like wrote on twitter like hey guys can you just pray for me or whatever and somebody said on the track i have a wreck a voicemail of my mom speaking to me like i was having an anxiety attack two years ago and i was supposed to get on a plane to come to a funeral a family member had died and my anxiety attack was so strong i didn't get on the plane i just couldn't make it and so she left me this voicemail basically encouraging me which is what my mom always does even when i don't want it uh and so i actually went back last night and listened to maybe there's four tracks in a row in cosmos that kind of tell that arc of the story and i went back and listened to them and it actually like settled and brought peace to me which is funny to listen to your own art and to uh res i was able to receive from it almost detached from the making of it and just allow my mother's voice to speak to me and the heart of what the songs like in the gray and light the way home and cosmos like those songs that progression leading me out of like my isolation and into the like on wonder and beauty of everything and that's yeah my own music did that for me last night so that was kind of wild um to experience what people have been messaging and emailing me about hmm and so as so how often happens with a record now you're planning a tour i'm crazy three months two months two months two months two months man 35 shows two months it's crazy it's like four to five shows a week i'm absolutely out of my mind listen we're planning three shows in a row in texas and i think i'm gonna die you're not gonna die from that the most i've done on that has been two weeks i've never done but i've done two weeks back to back like that yeah this will be i did it yeah this will be two months i'm literally so for me i feel like i'm just it's time to reintroduce myself and and i guess my message where are you going you know everywhere i'm i i'm going to everywhere i've ever been i'm going i'm starting in la going to phoenix el paso austin dallas atlanta new orleans orlando raleigh charlotte nashville st louis kansas city denver chicago minneapolis new york city toronto london uk like i'm going everywhere and some other cities we didn't even name so if you didn't hear your city we're probably coming um i've toured all those cities in the past as a worship leader yeah and now i feel like it's time to reintroduce myself and and the things that i've learned um through the album but also we're gonna have time a q a as well too so i'll play some tracks from the record i have a cool visual i've created to go along with it and uh i'm gonna sing perform to the record and then we're gonna do some q a around spirituality and justice but i i really feel like it's time to take kind of the cosmos message in a time where like there's so much fear and exclusion i think it's time for us to begin to declare loudly the inclusive love of god the universal love of god to all people not just to christians or those who claim to believe and um i i feel very passionate about that it's not a crusade or anything as much as it is like i feel a prophetic urgency of like all right it's time to talk about spiritual deconstruction into reconstruction and give that language and put it out there and and just go hug people and and cry with them and hear their stories and drink wine with them and uh yeah which one that's all i kind of want to do so i just want to go on a two-month tour once it start august 29th and it goes to october 29th um we're gonna end in san francisco i'm going to seattle portland sacramento as well hit the west coast on the tail end yeah and in my favorite state in the planet calif california it's a good place isn't it california california here we come i've been in the state 10 years wow and over 10 years and i love this state i'm here for this state me too although just the two years for me so far but i can't wait to get to my 10-year california you will you will we i remember when you were just visiting we were encouraging you to move here uh i think that's really powerful that you are here and that you've experienced such radical openness and grace and love and family in california than where you were at in florida it kind of messes you up you get to hear because like what you don't realize living other places is how much like passive social pressures influence what you talk about and don't talk about and what you explore in yourself and what you don't and you get to a place that is like hey you do you and then you're like wait who am i yeah very much our i would i mean every place has a social order california definitely has one we're not perfect out here because man it is far more open far more fluid far more you can be people i don't hate on you for being christian in california like that's not actually a thing um people don't like like exclusion but they don't like you say you're a christian people like that's awesome tell me more about it like there's this idea that the rest of the country has about california to me that's just not truthful and that is why i on science might want to make a very big announcement announcement uh oh here we go i literally don't know this is by the way i william matthews am formally endorsing kamala harris for president of the united states that's right everyone i am making a formal endorsement of our california senator she was our attorney general and she was a da for san francisco she is a hometown girl she grew up in oakland she grew up in the same denomination i did church of god in oakland and she will be she she she will be our next president i would love to offer some meaningful debate or push back for the audience but uh pretty much since our announcement i've been team camelot i got like tempted by warren briefly i love warren i love warren but i don't know after i saw that debate i was i was but hadn't i been telling y'all i think i think warren's brilliant she is absolutely i think she's electable don't hear me wrong very electable but i think when i imagine who i want to have that nuclear football yep it's camella yeah when i think about like who do i want to deal with the repub with a potentially competitive republican senate is camel yeah also it's kamala likes comma c-o-c-o-m-a think of it like that i have a learning disability that's why i mispronounce things so i hear you saying it's not camella it's camelot and i'm going what am i saying there's this there's some sound that my brain won't process it's true i literally it's a an auditory processing deficiency um and when you guys like i'm on stage and you shout out the correct pronunciation all i hear you saying is what i just said yeah i get that so i was i was more hold on you said comma yeah as in a comma kamala kamala yeah because kamala kamala i'm saying that correctly now kamala kamala yep president of the united states i'm practicing kamala president kamala harris comma law okay i can do that yeah i can't hear the germans without the but i can say comma so for me it was about an ethnic thing because she she is uh half black and half i believe she's tamil uh uh indian yeah so yeah so they pronounce it uh like sure um so that that's what it was but yeah you do have a learning disability no heat no shame no judgment is half black half indian 100 badass a hundred percent as liza would say um and if you're if you're not you know there's i know people get inflamed over politics william and i basically we have a tech service and friends that he and i regularly take over with political chatter and everyone else stops talking except for like because they're just not our friend jessie yeah she'll stick around she's on team liz which i love i'm here for liz and her policies and her plans um i just know that whoever the next president is going to be um and i do believe it's kamala they need to be able to prosecute the case against the corruption of the current moment that we're living in and who better than a former prosecutor who who really can can laser in on the thing that that no one's talking about and she has a unique ability you've seen it on the senate judiciary probably with her skewering agey bar and jeff sessions and god knows who else she she has an ability to get things to their root and so i love the idea about a black female prosecutor who is also she was an attorney general she is a law and order candidate but law and order that's just and compassion and works for everyone i think that's important moving forward um you can keep all your like wishy liberal uh hippie stuff i don't really care about that i want someone that's going to protect the dignity of all people i have got i have caught some heat already for my kamala support yeah i bet from uh from some advocates yeah of course and they they will no no candidate super concerned with her yeah they they should be more concerned about who's in the white house than uh right now than who's trying to get there but um at the end of the day no president obviously is going to represent anyone's views perfectly or anyone no record is perfect right like half the people that are critiquing couldn't run for a public office if they wanted to because their sex tapes would get out so there was that i don't have a sex tape but i couldn't run for public office right or the people they bribed would get out so let's let's be very clear and i'm not saying that to squash and fair critiques but there's a difference between a fair critique and a uh people yeah you're still trying to learn her name i'm trying to hear the difference cam come this is not good radio but i know you all love me if you listen to science mic camera cam allah [Music] that's it that's the amount of work it takes me to change the pronunciation that's fair listen there are a lot of people that are mispronouncing her name out there so you're doing them a service right now you should know her even if you don't want to vote for her you should definitely know who she is and watch out for because our california senator is making waves and she is she is up in the polls neck and neck with joe biden now so i love it there you go and for 14 blue because i i do i do identify as a democrat and as much as i identify with the political party i am definitely an anybody but biden guy like yeah if i were to rank the candidates biden dead last for me yeah nyt just did a big podcast their daily podcast about his record on bussing and segregation today like they really brought some some nuance and some truth there uh and and they tried they did very fair i thought they critiqued him where he needed to be critiqued and also gave him benefit of the doubt where he deserved it um and it is a lot very nuanced but her critique on him was right about the busing issue and she wouldn't have said it if it wasn't oh exactly because she's a prosecutor she is trained to discern truth and to to understand also she is trained to understand people's weaknesses and she knows how to exploit it and that's actually what you want on a debate stage next to donald trump uh that you stole the words out of my brain not even on my mouth because i wrote my mouth yet but when i imagine who from all those 20 people could get on a stage with trump weather his attacks and then meaningfully pushed back yep it's hurt her it really it's always been her i mean because he got under hillary's skin yeah in the debates yeah when you're bringing uh uh your husband's accused uh rape victims to the debates uh that would get under anyone's skill right which is what he did if y'all don't know like and i wasn't digging at hillary there's a hundred percent chance i would have an aneurysm on and die on stage with donald trump i would become so frustrated that i would literally just die but my point is you need someone who is uncommonly unflusterable you know you know as i watched her go into biden yeah without destroying it no she didn't destroy him she just politically shifted them like which is right she was so laser focused in her attack on him and it was the attack is just i it's strong language i know i hate when we do talk about politics and blood sport language i do it's not actually helpful it is it is actually uh wrong but from a political perspective what she did was was truthful it was powerful and it was calculated and none of those things are wrong because she she weaponized her identity in the right way because it was true i gotta interrupt you because i've done you a disservice what i let us get onto politics and lose 5 000 listeners it's fair so before we keep going do you want to tell people where they can learn more about the tour while some of them might still be here yeah thank god they probably left they probably left us when you were doing comma camera they were like uh this podcast went south really quick yeah you can uh you can find me at williammathewsmusic.com you can also find me on instagram or twitter just google or you know william matthews also all my socials are on my website too um also i have a youtube channel and i'm releasing music videos and yeah i'm just trying to create quality art that matters to me and also matters to the world so all the support likely as well as you can stream cosmos um on apple music and spotify hit the follow button on spotify that does me a lot of help i really appreciate that um i'll do that right now yeah that's people don't know if you if you like an artist hit the follow button and their music will show up more in your algorithms um and also their new music will show up in playlists for you and so uh that's what really matters for indie artists especially using streaming now as the main format people are consuming music hit the follow button on spotify um that has never occurred to me to follow any artist well that's how you just so you know if you use spotify in general that's how you curate a better spotify experience which makes you want to listen longer is any artist that you love big or big or small or whoever hit the follow button and they're man alive dude you got a lot of streams yeah i bro i have i think if i were to combine all my streams they're somewhere over 60 million yeah that's it's millions and millions and tens of millions and yeah wow yeah that makes sense when you set out earlier as a popular person yeah um but yeah so that's where you can find me hit me up follow me on spotify yeah that's actually more important than instagram at this point okay everybody listening to the sound of my voice if you have spotify follow william matthews on it whatever streaming service you have you can do what i do i make a playlist of all my friends music i mute my phone i hit play and repeat every night while i sleep there you go so i do like 10 to 12 hours of playing my friend's music oh that's so good that helps every night yeah it helps yeah so uh dude thanks for slumming it on last science mike slum in it this is this is a cadillac of podcasts this is this is primo supreme oh man the amazing thing about science mike is about a year in it just kind of became its thing it doesn't really grow it doesn't really shrink it's just uh loyalty yeah it's just you know you and me and i don't know quarter million people this month so loyalty loyalty a lot of fun i like i like i like a science mic because they um you know the liturgist listeners you got to keep it like pretty shiny pretty pretty snappy you gotta have all your music transitions are they just like i can't do this but i just like hit record talk get done hit stop i know i'm trying to upgrade that's why i'm glad to be on ask science mike you guys are better listeners listeners jesus christ i consider them the cream of the crop they are the they're the de la de la crim is that what you call them i can't speak in english man the creme de la creme oh yeah i think that's yeah that's it okay i found it but uh follow on matthewsmusic.com and you've done it you've survived another episode of ask science mike as always thank you greg nordine for your work in production andrew gillucki in pre-production jeb botiford wrote the ass science mic theme song i'm your host science mike and i can't wait to talk with you next week see you later