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ZERO SIGNAL. A show about what they won't say
and what you're probably already thinking. No
fluff, no filters, no bullshit. Let's crack it
open. in the night. Sleep! My name is Jim. My
name is Otto. Please meet your Otto. The first
thing you notice is the sound. Not the guns.
It's the fact that they have stopped. Your ears
keep bracing for the next crack of a rifle, the
next thud of a shell, the next short cut -off
scream, and instead there's just wind moving
over broken ground, rattling frozen grass and
loose scraps of canvas. Down on the trench you
hear a small sound again, boots scraping damp
boards, someone coughing in the dark, the slow
drip of melted frost working its way through
sandbags. The trench itself creaks in size like
an old ship in a black ocean, and then from somewhere
down the line, through the fog and powder of
smoke and winter air, you hear something that
does not belong on the battlefield. Singing one
voice at first then and a little shaky then another
joins it then a third until the distance There's
a rough uneven choir. You don't understand the
words at first, but the tune hits you right in
the chest Stalin is highly nished silent night.
Holy night. You're standing at a trench that
smells like wet earth gunpowder and sweat, soaked
deep into wool, nauseating rod of things that
have been dead for far too long. It's December
24th, 1914, somewhere along the western front.
For months you've been told that the men opposite
you are monsters, the hun, the brutes, the savages,
the kind of enemy you can shoot without ever
really letting your brain register the shape.
of its face. You've watched artillery strip trees
bare in an instant, leaving only splintered stumps
like broken teeth against the sky. You've seen
men you know yesterday become shapes you try
not to think about when the trench goes quiet.
You can tell outgoing from incoming artillery
the way someone at home can tell rain from hail.
And now your enemy is lighting candles and singing
Christmas carols. Welcome back to Zero Signal.
Tonight we're going back to a moment in history
keeps trying to turn into a cute footnote. A
little Did you know box in the corner of a page,
the Christmas truce of 1914. As night falls on
Christmas Eve, Allied soldiers are surprised
by what they are hearing over from the German
trenches. Private Frank Sumter is one of the
first to recognize what they are singing. And
then we are the Germans singing Silent Night
Holy Night. Our boys are just joined in, so we
joined in with a song. The British sentries don't
know what to make of what's happening across
the narrow no man's land. Private Leslie Walkington
was there. So then we began to pop our heads
over the side and jump down quickly in case they
shot, but they didn't shoot. And then we saw
a German standing up waving his arms and we didn't
shoot. We're in the midst of Christmas truths.
First they were afraid of each other, and then
they started to talk and shaking hands. And once
they did that, it just seemed to be friends.
The British Khaki and the German Grey are soon
gathering all mingled together. By Christmas
1914, every soldier knew that the enemy was sharing
the same misery as they were. Both sides are
well aware that consorting with the enemy is
only one step away from treason. A crime punishable
by court -martial and execution. Men on both
sides go to sleep that night, wondering if they
will wake up the next morning to renewed fighting
or a continued effort to defy the war. The fear
of punishment is enough to get most of the soldiers
back to fighting. How amazingly difficult it
must have been. for these people to pick up shooting
again, and with any kind of vigor, try and kill
people in the opposite trench that they just
celebrated Christmas with. Private Archibald
Stanley remembers how his officer put an end
to their armistice. On Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day along the stretches of the Western Front,
British and German soldiers did something no
king ordered, no general planned, and no government
wanted. They stopped. They put down their rifles,
climbed up out of the earth like ghosts, and
walked into one of the places on the map that
supposedly belonged to nobody. It was called
No Man's Land. Officially, this is treated like
a sentimental hiccup, a one -off, a weird little
snow globe moment inside the nightmare of World
War I. Nice story, but it doesn't mean anything.
But if you set with it and really look at it,
It starts to sound a lot more dangerous than
that because what happened that night is this
the people doing the killing proved for a few
hours that they could walk away from their scripts
ignore the propaganda and recognize each other
as human and the people running the war did not
like what it revealed To see why, we have to
rewind a bit. Summer, 1914. The war kicks off
with flags and brass bands, politicians giving
speech from balconies, crowds packing train stations,
cheering young men in new uniforms. We'll show
them you'll be home by Christmas. Mothers and
wives wiping tears from their eyes pretending
they're not terrified. By December, those promises
are just a bad joke. The western front is now
a 400 -mile wound clawed into the earth, trenches
facing trenches, sometimes only a stone's throw
apart. Between them, a strip of ground turned
into mud and crater. wire. Bodies lying where
they fell because anyone who tries to retrieve
them gets cut down. No man's land. It's not poetry.
It's a practical description. If you walk there,
when everyone's doing what they're supposed to
do, you die. It's as simple as that. Down in
the trenches, life is a different flavor of hell.
The walls ooze mud. The floor tries to steal
your boots. Rats run over your legs while you
sleep. Lice chew at your skin. You watch trench
foot turn feet into pale, swollen things you
don't even want to look at. You fall asleep with
your chin on your knees, hip to hip with men
who smell exactly like you do. Your whole world
shrinks to this narrow, filthy corridor, a strip
of gray sky, and the constant awareness that
one shell, with bad manners, could drop your
whole little universe into a crater. It's cold.
It's wet. It's very obviously not going to be
over by Christmas. Then the calendar rolls into
late December, and that word, Christmas, floats
up through all the mud and all of the noise.
Back home, Christmas is warmth and light, crowded
tables, crackling fires, wax dripping from candle
stubs and little country churches. Here, it's
a metal tin embossed with a royal profile. Cigarettes
from a princess, chocolate from a Kaiser, a card
that says Merry Christmas in careful script,
handed to a man whose odds of seeing New Year's
are basically a coin flip. It's a strange kind
of whiplash. With one hand, the machine pats
you on the back and gives you treats. The other
hand, it points you towards machine guns and
tells you to climb. The first sign that something
is going to break comes at dusk and it settles
on Christmas Eve. On the German side, little
evergreens, scraggly Christmas trees hacked from
somewhere behind the start appearing at tops
of trenches. Men wedges them into sandbags. Candles
flicker on the branches, tiny halos of light
around helmeted heads. The Germans start singing
hymns, carols, patriotic songs. It's not polished,
it's raw and shaky and soft. On the British side,
heads peak up, careful and suspicious. You've
been taught to hear death and everything. A glint
of light, a cough, a patch of silence, a whirl
of candles on the enemy's trench. That could
be anything, a trick to draw fire, a distraction,
but the bullets don't come. The song grows, the
warm glow of candles runs a - the German's line,
like someone hung a string of stars on the ground.
So the British answer. One voice starts a carol
on the allied side, the first Noel. Another joins
in, O come, all ye faithful. Two different languages,
but the same songs. The melodies cross over the
wire and hang into the frozen air above the corpses.
For a minute, the front sounds less like a graveyard
and more like a fractured Christmas service.
And then a shout rises above all of it, rolled
in a German accent and rough English. Tommy,
you no shoot, we no shoot. That sentence should
not exist here. Once it's been thrown into the
darkness, it just hangs there, daring someone
to believe it. The truce doesn't happen with
a whistle or an official order. It spreads like
courage or insanity, or maybe both. In some sections,
a single German soldier climbs out first. In
others, it's a British soldier. Somewhere, a
Scotsman in a kilt scrambles up, his bare knees
flashing in the moonlight, and the German burst
out laughing because they'd never seen anyone
go to war with so much leg showing. Imagine taking
that first step up a ladder. You've been told
that poking your head up for more than a second
is basically volunteering to donate your skull
to the local sharpshooter. You've listened to
bullets crack overhead so often your body flinches
before your brain registers the sound. You watch
men go over the top and vanish into the smoke
only to be carried back in pieces. Now you're
climbing out into the open air. with no weapon
in your hands. The mud of no man's land grabs
at your boots. The ground crunches where it's
frozen and squelches where it's not. You move
past twisted barbed wire and shattered timber.
You see the bodies up close for the first time,
the stiff, unnatural angles, the torn wool and
frozen fingers. You try not to look too hard
at their faces. Opposite you, figures are climbing
out of their trenches too. At first, they're
just shapes. Then they're men, faces, stubble,
teeth flashing and nervous grins, hands raised
to show they're empty. You walk towards each
other. If this is a trick, this is the most laugh
- suicide attempt in history. But the closer
you get, the more obvious it is. They're just
as scared as you. Somewhere in the middle of
the wasteland, you stop. You stick your hand
out. A German glove reaches out to grab it. The
grip is firm but shaking. You both start laughing
because your bodies don't know what else to do
with all this energy that was supposed to go
into killing each other and suddenly has nowhere
to go. Then the floodgates open. Cigarettes appear
from every pocket. Pipes, bottle of schnapps,
bit of whiskey, chocolate wrapped in greasy paper,
sausage. Someone pulls out a photo. Woman in
a dress standing in front of a doorway. Kids
were kids with ridiculous haircuts. You can't
understand everything he's saying, but when he
taps the picture and says, You know exactly what
he means. You dig out your own crumpled snapshots.
You show him your wife, your sweetheart, your
little brother. He nods like he understands every
word you can say. In some sectors, conversation
turns practical. They talk about the bodies strapped
in the wire, lying face down in the mud for days,
swelling and freezing. Men from both armies agree,
tonight we will bury them. So British and German
soldiers move through no man's land as a single
burial party. They lift the dead as carefully
as they can, as if the bodies might protest if
they're handled too roughly. They dig shallow
graves in the frozen earth. They stand in ragged
circles, helmets off, heads bowed. An English
chaplain reads a prayer. A German chaplain reads
one too. The words are different. The ache underneath
is the same. Here in this strip of land meant
only for dying, they hold the only honest funeral
these men will ever see. And somewhere in all
this, a ball appears. Not a perfect stadium ball,
just a scuffed -up lump of leather. One of the
men has been hoarding like a treasure. It hits
the ground, and a dozen soldiers, German, British,
Scottish, chase it without waiting for anyone
to declare sides. Long coats fly open as they
run. Boots skid and slide. Someone yells a curse
in German that makes everyone laugh. The big
German defender shoulders the British private
aside and then, grinning, hauls him back to his
feet. The shot It goes so widely off target that
both trenches roar with laughter for a few minutes.
The only thing flying through the air between
the lines is that ball, not bullets. If you're
in that mud, in that moment, it feels like the
world is cracked and something bright is pouring
through the split. If you're sitting at a desk
miles away, reading a report that your frontline
troops have climbed out of their fortifications,
walked into no man's land, and shaked hands with
the enemy and played football, it feels like
a threat. Not from the Germans or the British,
but from your own men. Because if they can just
decide not to shoot today, what happens if they
decide not to shoot tomorrow? or the day after.
The Christmas truce wasn't planned. It wasn't
approved. It completely broke the rules of the
game. So the people who wrote the rules reacted
fast. On both sides, orders calmed down. No more
fraternizing with the enemy. No more climbing
out of the trenches except to attack. No more
sharing cigarettes. No more swiping badges. No
more joint burials. No more shouted greetings.
In some places... They start using the word treason.
Think about that. Talking to the man in the opposite
trench. Treason. Helping bury a body that's been
rotting between your lines. Treason. Realizing
the beast you've been ordered to kill has a wallet
full of family photos just like you. Treason.
From the point of view of the war machine, mercy
is a security breach. It's one thing for generals
to play at peace and conferences. They can control
that. It's quite another thing when frozen, terrified,
exhausted men at the bottom of the ladder start
creating their own ceasefire in the middle of
the night. The truth is a glitch in the system.
Tighten discipline, crack down on letters home
that tell the wrong kind of a story, turn up
the volume on propaganda, hammer home again and
again that the other side is not like you, not
human the way you are, not worth the same grief,
the same tears, the same prayers. Over time,
the official story of war quietly pushes the
truth into the background, but it is remembered,
it is softened. Isn't that nice? Those chaps
had a little football match in the middle of
a war. People are basically good after all. Anyway,
back to the big battles and the heroic charges.
What gets sanded off is the sharp edge. The fact
that thousands of men proved in real time that
the war only worked as long as they all agreed
to keep doing it. After 1940, there's no second
Christmas like this. The war eats that memory
and keeps marching. More shells, more gas, more
bullets, more names carved into stone. The system
has seen what happens when soldiers look each
other in the eye and it doesn't intend to let
it happen again. So what do we do with that?
Where's the conspiracy here? It's not one evil
mastermind stroking a cat in a dark room. Something
much more subtle. A network of decisions big
and small. that all point in the same direction.
Keep the work going, keep the machinery running,
and bury anything that might remind people they
could refuse. What scares the war machine isn't
the enemy guns, it's empathy, recognition. That
quiet, dangerous moment when a man in one uniform
looks at a man in another uniform and thinks,
I had been born in your town instead of mine,
I might be wearing the same coat as you. The
Christmas truce is one long, luminescent moment
of recognition. And that's why it gets turned
into a postcard instead of a warning sign. Now
fast forward to right now. We live in a world
with more more information and more connection
than those men in the trenches could have ever
dreamed of. We don't need to risk our lives climbing
out of the trench to see the faces of the other
side. We can see them on our phones, families
sheltering in basements, kids in makeshift classrooms,
soldiers, warriors filming themselves between
attacks. You think that would make it harder
to dehumanize people. But the logic of the system
hasn't changed much. It just upgraded its tools.
The minute a war starts, the narrative hardens.
The labels roll out. Evil, terrorist, Nazi, or
scum. Wars designed to smear whole groups of
people into one ugly, faceless thing. Wars designed
to make sure you never let your heart relax enough
to wonder what they're freed of or who they miss.
Algorithms amplify the loudest, angriest voices.
Peace sounds like weakness. Nuance sounds like
betrayal. And yet, under all that, the same old
dangerous truth is still there. If we see each
other, clearly, gets harder to keep killing each
other. Now I want to turn a corner, because all
of this, the truce, the candles on the trench
lines, the carols drifting over no man's land,
happens on Christmas. I'm not just a conspiracy
guy, I'm also a Christian. So I can't tell this
story without talking about Christ, because at
the center of Christmas is another story, one
so familiar we can almost recite it without thinking,
which is exactly why it slips past us. A young
woman, pregnant before the wedding completes,
a confused fiance, trying to trust what he's
been told in a dream, a long forced trip, because
some emperor far away wants everyone counted
and taxed. No room, no guest room, just a place
with animals and straw. The son of God. You take
this story seriously. God enters the world not
as a general, not as a king, not as a billionaire,
but as a crying helpless baby, born into poverty,
born under occupation, laid in a feeding trough.
The first people who hear about him aren't governors
or priests, they're shepherds, men on the edges
of society, working the night shift. They're
the ones the angels tell a savior is born. Peace
on earth. Beginning, the Christian story is about
God stepping into the dirt, into danger, into
what we would call no man's land. The place where
suffering and fear and injustice pile up. Fast
forward 30 plus years, and that same child, grown
into a man, is hanging on a Roman cross, naked,
bleeding, between two criminals. He talks about
loving enemies, not just neighbors. He says things
like blessed are the peacemakers, and if someone
strikes you on the cheek, turn the other. He
tells his followers to pray for those who persecute
him. He forgives the people killing him when
they're still doing it. From the world's perspective,
This is complete insanity. From a Christian perspective,
this is God's logic written in blood. Now, what
does this have to do with the trenches of 1914,
with Ukraine and Russia in 2025, with you listening
to this episode? It's this, Christians believe
that at the cross, Jesus stepped into the ultimate
no man's land between a holy God and rebellious
humanity, between people and their enemies, between
every dividing wall we build and let all that
hatred, all that violence, all that sin crash
onto him. He simply absorbed it and then he rose
again. Not just to say, look, miracles are real,
but to open up a new way of being human. A way
where reconciliation isn't a naive fantasy. It's
the natural fruit of knowing you've been forgiven.
The Christmas truce is like a small flickering
picture of that. In the middle of a world organized
around hatred and fear, light leaks through.
A few candles, a few carols, a few empty hands
extended in risk and trembling. For a night,
the men in the trenches live as if Jesus was
serious when he said, love your enemies. They
don't have the theology sorted out. They're not
angels. They'll go back to fighting, but for
those hours, they're living closer to the kingdom
of God than all the dignitaries giving speeches
in warm buildings miles away. So now I want to
speak directly as a Christian to a very particular
no man's land, to Ukraine, to Russia. Somehow,
someday, a soldier in a trench near one of the
Ukrainian towns where a conscript sitting in
a dugout near Belgrade, where a mother hiding
with her kids in a basement in Kharkiv. Ever
hear these words? This is for you. You have been
given so many names for each other, Nazi, Orc,
Fascist, Terrorist, You've been told again and
again that the people on the other side are monsters.
That their lives are worthless. That their deaths
count more as wins than as tragedies. You've
been told that God is on your side and not on
theirs. That he blesses your bullets more than
theirs. But the Jesus I follow is not a tribal
mascot. He doesn't belong to one flag. He was
born under occupation. He lived among ordinary
people pushed around by empires. He healed the
servant of an enemy officer. He told a story
where the good guy was from a hated group. He
died forgiving forgiveness. He died praying forgiveness
over the men who hammered the nails. So hear
this from one Christian voice, far away, but
trying to be honest. Jesus loves the people in
the other trench as much as he loves you. He
shed the same blood for them that he shed for
you. He hears Russian prayers and Ukrainian prayers.
He weeps over Russian widows and Ukrainian widows.
He listens to the terrified breath of soldiers
on both sides who whisper, Lord have mercy, even
if they're not sure who they're talking to. Not
here to tell you what orders to follow or disobey.
I don't know your life, your risk, the pressures
crushing you. I will not sit in safety and say,
just put your guns down and walk away. Like,
this isn't a choice that could cost you everything,
including your life. But as a Christian, I can
say this. Your soul is not state property. Your
heart does not belong to any president or general
or party. Belongs to God only. And in Christ,
you are allowed, commanded even, to see your
enemy as someone you could one day call brother
or sister. You are allowed to pray for them.
You are allowed to ask God to protect their children
and yours. You are allowed to refuse. the truth.
less than human. He can help you pray for your
enemies through clenched teeth and wet eyes.
He can keep you from becoming what this war is
trying to turn you into. So to the Ukrainian
soldiers listening in the dark, checking your
phone between incoming rounds, Christ is with
you in that hole. He sees your fear. He knows
you're exhausted. He knows you're angry. He doesn't
despise any of that. He has stood in the garden
sweating blood and saying, Father, if there is
any other way, he understands. To the Russian
conscript who didn't want to be here, who feels
used, who feels trapped between fear and dying
and fear of her fusing, Christ is also with you.
Not as a stamp of approval in every command you
receive, but as the one who knows what it is
to stand before corrupt power and stay truthful.
He was beaten by soldiers too. He knows that
uniform doesn't tell your whole story. To the
mothers and fathers in both countries, lying
awake and staring at the ceiling, replaying last
words and worrying over quiet phones, the God
who watched his own son die is not indifferent
to your grief and he is not far. My prayer for
you, for Ukrainian and for Russians, is not a
cheap thoughts and prayers line. It is that the
spirit of Christ would protect your humanity
in a place designed to destroy it. That he would
open ways of peace that no one else can see right
now. That he would raise up brave voices and
quiet acts that push back against this terrible
war. And if you were a follower of Jesus on either
side of that front, I want to remind you directly,
your first flag is the cross. Long after these
borders are redrawn and these leaders are gone
and these headlines are history, Christ will
still be king. He will stand side by side with
believers from the other side in a king. them
where nobody remembers where the old trenches
used to be. So don't let this war fright your
theology. Let Jesus do that. Let him teach you
how to carry a cross even while you're forced
to carry a rifle. Let him teach you how to long
for justice without losing mercy. Let him teach
you how to look across your own no man's land
and see a person for whom he died. As we land
this episode, I want you, wherever you are, to
hold onto one image in your mind. A dark, ruined
field. The sky above it scarred by old shellfire.
Candles flickering along the edges of two trenches.
Men climbing out of the earth with trembling
legs and empty hands, German, British, Scottish,
walking towards each other across ground that
has only ever known death. In the middle they
meet, not as heroes, not as saints, just as men
who, for one night, dared to believe that the
message sung in those carols might be more than
just words. The God of everything, the God we
call Christ, the Holy Redeemer. I believe that
night he was not in the palaces or the war room.
He was out there in no man's land, standing by
the bodies being finally buried, standing Standing
by the soldier who couldn't bring himself to
aim low the next day. Standing by the ones who
said brother in a language they barely spoke.
And today I believe he is still in No Man's Land.
all over this world. Between nations, between
neighbors, between husbands, between wives who
haven't spoken kindly in months. Between churches
split over lesser things than life and death.
That's where Jesus goes. Into that gap. Into
the place everyone else has written off as hopeless.
He steps in and stretches out his arms on a cross
in a trench in a living room and says, Peace
I leave with you. By peace I give to you. Not
as the world gives. So wherever you are, whoever
you are, may you know that peace. May you know
that peace. May you meet Christ in your own no
man's land. And may you, in his strength, dare
to see an enemy, and even if only in your heart
for now, whisper the most dangerous words in
any war. Brother, this is Zero Sigma. I wish
everyone listening and all our loyal fans a Merry
Christmas. In the name of Jesus, the Prince of
Peace, may God have mercy on Ukraine. May God
have mercy on the Russian soldiers. May this
new year that is quickly approaching find true
peace. May he teach all of us how to live like
the troops he began at the cross is more than
just a story. in 1940 demonstrated it to everyone
in the world. Hopefully one day, hopefully one
day soon, we can pit down our rifles and treat
each other with kindness and love.