The Neil Haley Show Featuring Christian Hubicki, Liam, Griff Ruby, and Mary Shearer Eckert

Neil opened live from the 2026 FIRST Championship in Houston with Christian Hubicki, FIRST alum, Florida State University robotics professor and Survivor 50 contestant, alongside Liam, a high school student whose team is competing this week. Liam shared how joining the team in eighth grade transformed him from someone who couldn't talk in front of people into a confident presenter who had already pitched judges in his pit and improv'd full answers earlier in the day. Christian explained that FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, the leading global K-12 robotics nonprofit that has 19,000 students at this year's championship and over 50,000 participants worldwide. He emphasized that the robots are essentially the campfire that brings everyone together, with students learning real career skills in 3D printing, coding, fundraising, marketing, accounting, and communication. Christian noted that he was on Team 7 back in the day and FIRST now has over 80,000 teams. Liam plans to pursue 3D animation and was inspired by Boston Dynamics machine learning. To get involved as a student, mentor, or sponsor, visit firstinspires.org/learn.Neil then turned to a special interview powered by Books to Life Marketing, welcoming author Griff Ruby to discuss his book Sede Vacante! Part One: Dogmatic Ecclesiology Applied to Our Times. Griff explained that "sede vacante" means "the chair (of Peter) is vacant" and walked Neil through his theological argument that those occupying the Vatican since Vatican II have been preaching a Novus Ordo religion fundamentally at odds with traditional Catholicism, putting it on equal footing with pagan and Protestant beliefs in ways the apostle Paul explicitly warned against. Drawing parallels to the 1054 Eastern Schism in Constantinople and the Anglican break in England, Griff argued that Vatican II officially declared the Roman institution to be a society in which the Catholic Church merely "subsists" rather than the Church itself, an inversion that traces to language promulgated November 21, 1964.Griff and Neil discussed how the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in the 1990s differs sharply from the older Catechism of the Council of Trent and the Baltimore Catechism, and how the Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II prayers were preserved by traditional Catholics worldwide as documented in Griff's first book, The Resurrection of the Roman Catholic Church. He used a David Copperfield Statue of Liberty illusion analogy to argue that even when people debate theories of how the disappearance happened, the truth of what was lost remains clear. Griff directs faithful Catholics to traditio.com (run by a priest since 1994) for a directory of traditional Latin Masses worldwide and recommends his books on Amazon.Neil closed the hour with bestselling author Mary Shearer Eckert continuing their conversation about her novel Wounded Sisters, this week tackling the theme of pride. Mary distinguished prideful pride (the "I can do it myself, I don't need God or anyone" attitude she described as fear wearing armor) from being proud of God's work in your life. Citing 1 John 1:8, Proverbs 16:18, and her father's old cowboy saying that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, she said pride is the root from which all sins grow and that admitting you have a problem is always the first step. At a recent book signing she told readers, "Don't come up to me and tell me what a great writer I am, tell me whether the book blessed you," underscoring that her stories are meant as a blessing rather than a vehicle for ego. Wounded Sisters carries a thread of forgiveness and the upcoming sequel will deal with grief using the same characters. Find autographed copies at MaryShearerEckert.com.You said: do the same