Podcasts about other lies

On this episode, my guest is Leslie Kern, PhD, the author of three books about cities, including Gentrification Is Inevitable And Other Lies and Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World. Her work provokes new ways of thinking about and creating cities that are more just, equitable, caring, and sustainable. Leslie was an associate professor of geography and environment and women's and gender studies at Mount Allison University from 2009-2024. Today, she is a public speaker, writer, and career coach for authors and academics.Show Notes* Gentrification and touristification* Naturalization of gentrification* The new colonialism* Intersectionality* Who's to blame: renter or landlord?* The hipster and the safety net* The invisible face behind gentrification and touristifcation* Transactionality or hospitality? The case of Airbnb* Commercial gentrification* The right to stay putHomeworkLeslie Kern - Website - InstagramGentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies - USA - Canada Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World - USA - CanadaHigher Expectations: How to Survive Academia, Make it Better for Others, and Transform the UniversityThe Tenant Class by Ricardo TranjanTranscriptChris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Leslie, to the End of Tourism Podcast. Thank you for taking time out of your day, to speak with me. Thank you. To begin, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to tell us where you find yourself today and what the world looks like there, for you.Leslie: Sure. I find myself in Cambridge, Ontario.It's a city of about 130,000 people. If I looked out my window right now, I would see a lot of blowing snow. It's about minus 27 Celsius with the windchill, or something hideous like that today, so taking the time to talk to you this morning means I don't have to go out and shovel anything just yet. So.Chris: Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us. it's a great honour and I'm really looking forward to this conversation that bears a great deal of complexity. So, I had invited you on the pod in part to explore your book, Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies. And [00:01:00] in it, Leslie, you write that“Gentrification has come to be used as a metaphor for processes of mainstreaming, commodification, appropriation, and upscaling that are not necessarily or directly connected to cities. In this story about gentrification, gentrification stands in for any sort of change that pulls a thing or a practice out of its original context and increases its popularity, priciness, and profit-making potential.”Given that some of our listeners might not have heard of the term “gentrification” before, although I doubt it, but given that those who have heard it might understand it also to be what you and others refer to as a “chaotic concept,” I'm wondering if you'd be willing to take a stab at defining it for us today?Leslie: Yeah, absolutely. If we [00:02:00] look to, I guess, a kind of typical scholarly definition of gentrification, it would be describing an urban process in which middle or upper class, or in some other way, privileged households start to move into a neighbourhood or area of the city that has historically been more working class, or perhaps an immigrant neighbourhood, perhaps more industrial, and begin to remake that neighbourhood, kind of in their own image, thus driving up housing prices both in the rental and ownership markets, driving up the cost of living in the area, and critically, as part of the definition, resulting in some level of displacement of the older inhabitants of that neighbourhood. “Displacement” meaning they've been kind of priced out or otherwise pushed directly or indirectly to leave and [00:03:00] move to some other neighbourhood.So, typically with gentrification, the definition is centred around it being a class-based process, but in more recent decades, many scholars, myself included, have wanted to broaden that and to acknowledge that other axes of power and privilege, for example, race, gender, ability, age, sexuality, and so on, also play a role in contributing to the kinds of forces that propel gentrification. And we can maybe get into some of that later.So for myself, in the book, I talk about gentrification as “any kind of process of taking over claiming space and remaking it in the image and for the interests and benefit of a more powerful group of people, or perhaps even corporations, to some extent.” So, [00:04:00] gentrification is really the process of taking and claiming space. And I also do include displacement as part of that process, although I also acknowledge that sometimes people can be kind of psychologically displaced, even if they aren't necessarily physically pushed out of their neighbourhoods.Chris: Mean it's something that I was noticing in Toronto before I left and moved and migrated here to Oaxaca. It's something that I think in the last five or ten years has become an unfortunate mainstay of city life in the vast majority of places, of urban places in the world.And this is also something that I've seen quite a bit here in Oaxaca, Mexico in a somewhat prolific tourist destination. And so, in places that have [00:05:00] been deemed “destinations” in this way, there's often a kind of reductionism, here anyways, and in other tourist destinations in which gentrification and what's sometimes called touristification is confused.And so one definition of “touristification” is simply “the process of transformation of a place into a tourist space and its associated effects.” So a kind of very vague and broad definition. But we also understand that gentrification can happen in places that aren't necessarily tourist destinations.And so, we've also discussed in the pod the possibility that a place doesn't necessarily need tourists in it to have touristic qualities or context what we might say. [00:06:00] And so I'm curious for you, do you think it's important to distinguish the two concepts, gentrification and touristification? And if so, why?Leslie: Yeah, great question. I think a distinction, to some extent, is important in that, yeah, there may be elements of touristification, for example, that are somewhat unique to that process, especially in terms of the kind of impact that it might have on local inhabitants who may not necessarily be displaced, but who may see their everyday lives kind of radically altered by the touristification of an area.And as you say, gentrification happens in all kinds of areas, many of which are not geared to tourism, although sometimes that is a kind of later effect of gentrification, is that tourists might be drawn to certain neighbourhoods or places that they would not have otherwise gone to in the past.As [00:07:00] you mentioned in your earlier question, there's been some concern in the gentrification literature that it's a bit of a chaotic concept, by which it is meant that it's maybe too broad of an umbrella [term], and so many different kinds of processes are kind of lumped together under that umbrella. I think it's a useful umbrella, but under that umbrella, we can try to be clear about what we're talking about when we look at particular locations, and try to articulate the impacts that these processes are having on the local community, economy, environment, and so on.Chris: Thank you, Leslie. Thank you for that. So your book is broken up into chapters that reveal the deeper realities behind the tropes or lies sometimes spouted about gentrification. And there are often many. And so I'm curious if after having done the research and writing for this book, and it was published in [00:08:00] 2022, so perhaps there's been some deeper reflection in that regard, I'm curious what you feel might be the most important lie about gentrification that requires our attention and why?Leslie: Ooh, really putting me on the hook to like pick a favorite child there. No, I'm joking. Ultimately, I mean, I guess the most straightforward answer would be the first one that I discuss in the book, which is right there in the book's title, which is the idea that gentrification is inevitable. And we can kind of unpack that a little bit further, as I do in the kind of first main chapter of the book, which is to say that in some accounts of gentrification, it's presented as a sort of natural process, right? As something that is just akin to evolution, for example. So there's this idea that if you kind of start with, for example, a working class or immigrant [00:09:00] neighbourhood, lower income community, with some other kinds of attributes that might not make it seem wealthy or desirable, that over time, just through, I don't know, a kind of mystical series of properties, the way that species evolve or human beings develop from fetus and baby to an adult through this series of difficult to trace impacts, that somehow it just happens. Right. And of course, the problem with that, again, is that if we think it's natural, then we don't really think there's any way to stop it.And also when we describe something as “natural,” we often imbue it with positive qualities. Well, if it's “natural,” it's just meant to happen. It's just the way things are. And why would we want to stand in the way of that process? From a kind of political standpoint, it becomes very problematic, because it means that there's not really a [00:10:00] willingness perhaps on the part of those who have some power and influence to slow down gentrification, to pause it, to use whatever tools they might have in their kind of legislative toolbox to create guardrails around the process happening or to try to prevent it altogether. And from a kind of community response standpoint, it can be very disempowering to believe that gentrification is inevitable, unstoppable, that once you see those first, white, middle-class families move into your neighbourhood, “boom, you're done. It's over. The clock is counting down to the time when it's not your neighbourhood anymore and you'll just have to leave, so why bother to do anything about it?”And as I also try to show in the book, you know, it's hard to fight gentrification, but there are examples around the world of communities that have pushed back and kind of “pumped the brakes on gentrification,” as one [00:11:00] activist described it to me. So, we, I think, don't want to fall into this trap of believing that communities themselves are powerless, or that our politicians and policy-makers have absolutely no tools that they can use to change this.So I would say that is probably the most important kind of first line myth or lie that we need to challenge. And then we can kind of go down the line and pick apart some of the other ones, which is how I've structured the book as you point out. Yeah.Chris: Thank you, Leslie. Yeah, I mean, that was a really jarring chapter for me, in part because of this notion that not only is quote gentrification inevitable or natural, but that the city is, according to different philosophers and thinkers, imbued with this kind of biological life and [00:12:00] and that it follows as you were mentioning certain processes that are “ natural” as far as evolution is concerned.And imediately, this brought me back to my research on what's often referred to as 19th century social evolutionist thought, these notions that were often created or maintained by kind of, elite, wealthy, white men in the 19th century, not all of whom were academics, some of them were bankers, for example, among other things, but essentially promoting this notion that certain races or genders or types of people had evolved along the natural processes of evolution either faster than others or got ahead in certain ways, and that, of course, this was a way for those people, not only the non-academics, but those in academia [00:13:00] to employ hypotheses theories as a way of justifying colonial histories and the ongoing conquests of different people around the world. And so, in that context, I'm curious if you imagine or think that gentrification understood or described as “natural” in this way is a kind of extension, a historical extension of that kind of colonial power play of the 19th century.Leslie: Yeah, I absolutely do. And there are many ways in which the power dynamics and even the language or the vocabulary around gentrification mirrors that around colonialism with all of the problematic tropes there of neighbourhoods or areas of the city being taken over where “there's really nothing there,” right?[It's the] same kind of justification for colonialism. “There's nothing there. [00:14:00] There's nobody there that we need to care about,” so European colonizers are entitled to this land. Similarly, with the way that many developers, for example, I think, rationalize or justify the kind of projects they engage in.“Oh, there's nothing really happening in that part of the city. There's not really a community there. It's just a space of problems or deviation from the norm or disorder. And so we, as developers, as city planners, we're going to bring order and light and civilization, quite frankly, to these neighbourhoods.”So I'm sure you're hearing in this, all those echoes around colonialism. And this point around the social evolution part of it, I think that is the kind of darker, maybe less acknowledged side of gentrification, is that when we start to talk about neighbourhoods as “nothing's happening there, there's nobody there.” [00:15:00] Who's “nobody,” right? Who falls into that category of “nobody,” right? It's poor people. It might be unhoused people, working-class people, people of colour, queer people, disabled people, sex workers, right?“All people who we don't really think of as kind of counting as citizens, people who we don't think have a legitimate voice in the city, people who we don't think have a right to the city or a claim on the city.” And they're just seen as disposable, as easily displaceable, as not really contributing anything to the community or to the city at large. So I think there's definitely a sense of kind of hierarchy in terms of, “who are the seemingly new people who are coming in, right?” And they're viewed as “bringing all of these kind of gifts and benefits to the neighbourhood, and in some ways, perhaps even uplifting the poor [00:16:00] or downtrodden inhabitants of the ghetto or the barrio or whatever. And the locals should somehow be grateful to receive gentrification similarly to the way that people were, say, ‘oh, you should be grateful to receive an education if you're from the lower-classes or working-classes.'”So, yeah, I think there's definitely echoes and traces of that same kind of logic, right? It's a logic of superiority, a logic of dominance, a logic of control that resonates, whether it's colonialism or social evolutionism. Um, yeah.Chris: Wow. Fascinating. Fascinating stuff. I mean, this is, I think, to a large degree culture or what we call culture or what culture might be is made on the tongue, and that the, the kind of unacknowledged ways in which we speak the world into being [00:17:00] is something that's been direly overlooked in our time. So thank you for speaking to that in that way. And I think it's something that we would properly kind of continue to wonder about as we speak and as we think, and perhaps before we speak as well.You know, you mentioned in there the different types of people that are often displaced as a result of gentrification. And this shows up quite a bit in your book. So I wanted to ask you about what you refer to as “intersectionality,” an intersectional approach to gentrification.Some of the conventional critiques that you mentioned in the book, including the economic critique (kind of follow the money), the aesthetic critique (the kind of clean lines and fancy bakeries that show up), as well as the class critique, which you mentioned kind of upward mobility, among others.That said, you focus a good portion of the book, I think, on this neglected importance of intersectionality. And so I'm curious, why do you think an intersectional approach has been ignored in the [00:18:00] past, and why might it be crucial for a cohesive or integral analysis of gentrification?Leslie: Hmm. I think an intersectional approach has been kind of sidelined, if you will, in part because most of the key kind of prominent gentrification scholars of the late 20th century and into the 21st century have been, honestly, white men probably themselves from middle-class backgrounds, or obviously university educated scholars and they've been, like neo-Marxist, or Marxist. That's their theoretical perspective. That's their training. They come from a kind of Marxist, political economy, background. That's the lens of analysis that they bring to whatever kind of problem they're looking at in the world, including gentrification.And they've done brilliant work, right, and created a lot of really foundational [00:19:00] concepts, gone and done really important empirical work so that we can actually see what the impacts of these processes are. And there's nothing I want to take away from that being a key voice within the field of gentrification studies, but I think too often either there's been kind of minimal lip service paid or kind of outright pushing to the side of feminist perspectives, anti-racist perspective, anti-colonial perspectives and more, because it's sort of seemed like, well, “class is the main driver and anything that maybe disproportionately impacts women or people of colour, or queer folks or elderly people, that's like a side effect, right? Like the main driver is class and those people are simply impacted because they also happen to fall into lower income brackets.”So it's a pretty neat and tidy [00:20:00] story and you can kind of see why it has some appeal. So I think, you know, those political economy, neo-Marxist scholars is not that they don't care about race or gender or other factors. They're just like, “well, it's all really rolled up under the umbrella of ‘class.' And if we just figure out the ‘class' piece, then those other things will kind of fall into place.” But for feminist scholars, critical race scholars, anti-colonial scholars and so on, they've wanted to point out that assuming that class is the primary driver behind things is maybe an assumption that we've held onto for too long without questioning it. And instead of seeing racial impacts and so on as something that's just happening off to the side through a class process, maybe we want to also look, especially in something like an American context, but in other places as well, at the deeply foundational layer of race to the development of cities, to the development of the [00:21:00] nation, and we can't kind of sideline the impacts of racial discrimination and the kind of hierarchy of race that has developed over many centuries in these locations and say, “oh, well it's a secondary factor.”For myself, I'm a feminist scholar. My background is in women's and gender studies before I kind of accidentally stumbled into being an urban geographer. And to me it was always kind of obvious, but I think I've had to argue this point so often that processes like gentrification, neoliberalism, urban revitalization, as it's called, doesn't just kind of impact women as a tangential side effect, but that gender inequality or assumptions about gender roles and so on are like part of what drives the process. And so I try to bring that out in the book by looking at different kinds of examples of the ways in which different sorts of [00:22:00] communities or people are impacted to hopefully show, to hopefully make a case for this idea that taking an intersectional perspective doesn't deny the class factor at all, but that it allows us to look at gentrification through a more nuanced lens and one that respects the fact that class is not the only, and not always the most salient marker of hierarchy and status in our societies.Chris: Hmm, hmm. Yeah, I did go to university a long time ago, and it seemed that what was offered up on the proverbial, kind of conceptual, bill, politically speaking was, here are your five major theories or perspectives and kind of like choose one and decide what you like the best and then argue for it or against it.But it does seem that the more apertures that we have onto the world, without necessarily needing [00:23:00] to collapse our considerations into a single one can broaden our understanding of the world deeply, right? Deeply, deeply. And it's something that I see anyways less and less of.I think there's more and more possibilities for experiencing that in our time, but I think there's a lot of processes that are happening in which there's less and less of it that's actually occurring - a kind of collapse of maybe ontological diversity or philosophical diversity.I don't know what to call it, but seems prevalent and at least from this little aperture. So.Leslie: Yeah, I would agree with that, as someone who, just in my own little brief lifetime here on this earth has been peddling my little feminist arguments for 30-plus years. And then we add on to that, the 30 years before that and 30 years before all of the previous generations. It seems like we are, [00:24:00] not just from a feminist perspective, but we are kind of constantly having to make these arguments for that ontological diversity, as you put it, or even just the idea that, oh, you can view things through different lenses and learn different things about whatever kind of process or force or issue that you're interested in.Chris: Hmm. Well, thank you for that. I'd like to, if I can, Leslie, there was something I've been wrestling with for a while and it was very much front and centre, this kind of inner wrestling when I was reading your book.And so, I'd like to share that with you at the moment if I can, and we'll see where it takes us. So part of the reason that I left Toronto a decade ago was that the housing crises, that perhaps for some wasn't yet a crisis in Toronto, has of course ballooned. But in the past five years I've watched that same housing crisis play out here in Oaxaca.[00:25:00] And what arose almost immediately in the, we'll say media sphere, the online world and certainly on the streets as well, was a kind of xenophobic campaign or campaigns blaming tourists, digital nomads, and “expats” for the rising cost of rentals and housing. Now, while not entirely misguided, the percentage of such people is insignificant in comparison to the total population of renters and homeowners here.And then I ask myself, well, “why isn't anyone questioning the role of homeowners and landlords, those who actually decide the price of rental units, those who decide to turn long-term rentals into Airbnbs, and those who are, some of them anyways, more often than not, part and parcel of the political ruling class in many places?” Why not blame them?And so, if you think about this enough, you can [00:26:00] begin to imagine that the willingness to blame specific people, types, classes, races, et cetera, can ignore the cultural, economic and structural elements of society that allow and encourage such dynamics to emerge. And it seems to me that you speak to this, to some degree, in your book writing, how“it is not helpful in a critique of gentrification to get overly stuck on the styles and preferences of a group, when, for many decades now, gentrification has been propelled by much stronger forces than aesthetic trends.”And in another part of the book, you write that “cultural factors cannot be hastily dismissed, not when their power is easily co-opted by capital. Trends in denim and facial hair are not responsible for gentrification, but when large groups of people are redefined as a class based on their tastes, occupations, and aesthetics, they become a market and a justification for urban [00:27:00] interventions.”And so my question has to do with what I might call, I don't know if this is something that shows up in your work or in your research, but a kind of “ecological analysis,” one that doesn't necessarily separate people into essentialist categories, but contends with how maybe the rules of the game produce the player's behaviour and beliefs.And so I'm wondering, you know, in your research, is that something that is tended to, a way of, “okay so, we're not going to only blame or ask the tourists to take responsibility or the digital nomads, et cetera, and we're not only gonna blame or ask the landlords to take responsibility, but understand that they live and inhabit a kind of web of relations that has, for a long time, created the context that allows them or even [00:28:00] encourages them to proceed in a particular way?Leslie: Yes, a hundred percent. I really love the way that you put that there and giving it that kind of label of like an ecological perspective there. I think it's so important to do in the book. You know, the first quote that you read there, I think has to do with this idea that, “oh, you know, hipsters were causing gentrification” kind of thing.And I wanted to kind of, not defend the hipster per se, but to just say, well, in a city like New York, for example, the takeover of midtown Manhattan and the absolute sort of pricing out of regular people, well, from Manhattan as a whole in many cases is not to do with artists and yoga teachers moving into those neighborhoods. It has to do with massive multinational corporations buying up housing, developing condos, like all of these other things that [00:29:00] are going on. And as you say, I mean, I think it is useful to question and critique landlordism for example, and even home ownership itself, but there's a reason why people engage in these practices and as you say, it's because of these all sorts of other like prior sort of conditions and causes this kind of web of possibilities that so much of our... the policy, the legislative world, our national context shapes for us.Like in Canada for example, home ownership is, as you well know, sort of seen as the ultimate goal in the housing market. Renting is seen as very much a kind of transitional stage for people. And the idea is to eventually, sooner rather than later, own your own home.And of course there's all kinds of cultural myths around that, of homeowners being like responsible people and better citizens and all this kind of stuff that is, maybe like [00:30:00] largely nonsense. But why, in this context, do people become homeowners? Well, this is the way that we've been told “you secure your retirement in the absence of a truly kind of robust old age security net.” Yes, we have some. We have pension, old age pension, but for many people, the home is ultimately their social safety net, and government policy has very much been set up to encourage us to treat our homes in that way and to rely on paying off a mortgage and having that home to be the basis of survival into our old age.Right. And there are many other things. That's just one example. So I think, as you say, it's really important to kind of look at that whole ecosystem. And that doesn't mean that we don't say, “well, okay, what are homeowners doing that might be potentially problematic and contributing to the problem?”Well, that could include things like turning units into Airbnbs or acting in NIMBY-ish (Not In My Backyard), kind of ways that limit, for example, the amount of affordable housing that might go up in their neighbourhood and other things. Of course, all of those dynamics have to be critiqued, challenged, pushed back against. But, keeping, at the same time that kind of zoomed out perspective of like what's going on on a larger scale, in the kind of corporate and investment world and the government policy-making world, I think at least helps us to understand why these different groups are kind of positioned in the way that they do and the kind of range of possibilities that they see for themselves within that web.Chris: Mm mm Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me of a moment that I had here in Oaxaca, maybe three or four years ago. There was a student group that had come down from a Canadian university, and they were here for a couple weeks, and I was having dinner with them. Not all of them, but there was maybe four of the women from the student group that I was having dinner with.And one of them was probably in her, I would say [00:32:00] mid-fifties, an indigenous woman from Ontario. And the other three were much younger, probably in their early twenties. And they were suddenly talking about the sudden or at least recent kind of housing crisis in their university town, we'll call it, maybe a small city, but big town. And how in previous years they could afford the rent, but suddenly, and of course this was 2021-2022, when a lot of these dynamics started changing extremely rapidly. And I was kind of moderating the conversation at first. And then it turned out, she wasn't so quick to out herself as a landlord. But the indigenous woman, the 55-year-old kind of alluded to it and then said, “well, you know, for a lot of people, it's a pension plan. “It's my retirement plan, essentially.” And it was this really interesting dynamic about how these four women, who had come to this place and were in the same program, studying the [00:33:00] same thing, that one of them had to perhaps, unbeknownst to her, undermine the economic life and possibilities of those younger women by virtue of requiring a retirement plan.Right. And I think at least in Canada, in countries that are very much still welfare states, that it speaks to a, the incredible degree in which the care that's offered, especially to the elderly, is almost entirely top-down. There's so little, if any, community care.And, you know, of course this is a very kind of small example, a very kind of minute example. I think maybe a common one. But of course you also have other examples of, as you mentioned before, corporations... is it BlackRock this massive mutual fund that I know in, in Europe and places like Barcelona and the major cities there end up buying entire apartment buildings or blocks even, and evicting [00:34:00] the residents and then setting up Airbnb buildings, essentially. So, I mean, there's this incredible kind of degree of difference and diversity in terms of how, as you mentioned landlordism and rent is affecting people.But I just wanted to mention that. It was a really kind of interesting moment for me to see this dynamic and the young women kind of complaining about, you know, I guess the future, the present and the future of their economic lives. And then, this older woman also not necessarily complaining, but very much concerned about her ability to live as well, economically and to thrive economically into her older age.Leslie: Yeah. And there's these kind of ironic situations popping up all over the place where so for example, someone might have a public pension. And as you point out, many public pensions are deeply invested in real estate income trusts. This is like a huge piece for example, in Ontario, of [00:35:00] Ontario public workers' pensions, but around the world as well, and I don't have the details, but a story that was in the news several years ago about a man somewhere in Europe who was being evicted from his apartment because that one of these real estate investment corporations was taking it over and was gonna redevelop it in some way. But his public pension was invested in that very same company. Right?So many people are kind of caught in these loops where it's like, we would very much like to not be like, displacing ourselves or our neighbours or community members, but we don't necessarily have control over how our pension funds are invested, right? Like you might have a choice like, “oh, I'd like to divest from fossil fuels, for example, or from tobacco or military, like arms deals.” Like, sometimes, you can opt out of those things in your pension funds, but there's not really a way to like opt out of real estate investment.My substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.It's such a huge part of those things now. So I think that's an area where there's increasing kind of research and critical perspectives on that in gentrification scholarship and so on that I think is really important to look at, because it's also very hidden, right? This is another aspect I think of contemporary kind of gentrification touristification even, is that there's no face to it, right? There's no face to this process. And maybe that's why it's tempting to take, as you put it a minute ago, that kind of like xenophobic perspective or to blame “expats” in the case of Oaxaca and touristification or in cities to be like, “oh, it's these urban hipsters, maybe these like trust fund kids” or whatever label people might want to put on someone, because there's a face, right? There you can look and be like, “that's the problem.” But the reality is there is no face, right? There's no individual or even group of individuals that's easy to identify. And people doing [00:37:00] research into some of this pension fund stuff that I'm talking about, they hit very opaque walls, even just trying to get the information about how these companies work, the kinds of decisions they make, what their rubrics are around what they call “socially responsible investing.”So it's very deliberately mystified and hidden from us, and I think that is part of the challenge now is like, how do you fight this monster that you can't see, that you can barely name?So yeah, that is I think one of the kind of frightening things, if you will, about, whether we call it “gentrification,” or we think about it in this broader sense of the housing crisis, who's the face of that, the cause of that crisis? Very hard to say in many cases.Chris: Wow. Yeah, I know that these mutual fund companies that end up buying, you know, whole city blocks or buildings, apartment buildings, and then tending to renovictions or whatever they [00:38:00] might use in order to get people out. Once the buildings are “ renovated” as Airbnbs, what happens is those corporations end up outsourcing all of the operational and cleaning duties to companies that they're not involved with at all. So, again, you could have this person who's in front of you, who might be a cleaner or who comes ou in and out of the building or who might run the reservation books or something like that, but they've never met anyone from that mutual fund company. Right. They just get a paycheck.Leslie: Yeah. And it's happening on this kind of global level. The people behind the company that's investing in that building in Oaxaca, like they may have never set foot there, and they may never set foot there. Right? So it's happening from around the world, from thousands of kilometers away from behind these kind of screens of, as you said, these kind of shell companies and these subcontracted, property management companies.I mean the story you were just telling about the woman who's a landlord, like on that small scale, not that [00:39:00] there's nothing problematic about it, but it is also like, you know, she's probably met her tenants, right? She probably occasionally sets foot in the property that she owns and that she rents out, and there's like some aspect of a relationship there. It's still, you know, a problematic power dynamic and all of that, but it's on a very different scale than the investor from London who's has a stake in a condo in Oaxaca. Like, it's a very different web of of relations that goes into that.Chris: Yeah. And even if someone like that, and I've had many, many landlords over the years and I've been blessed to have a number of them who are really incredible people and really incredible in terms of showing up when they're needed in that regard. But it's something, I discussed on a previous episode regarding the Airbnb-ization of the world, a couple years ago. And one of the themes that came up was around hospitality, right? [00:40:00] And even if you have people who are kind of really engaged and really excited and responsible about having a tenant in their home or in a particular building, the kind of transactional nature of that rent almost (and then of course the history of it) precludes, almost by default, the possibility of there being a kind of host-guest relationship, right? Instead of that we are “clients” and and, and “salespeople,” businesspeople to some degree.Right. So another layer of it is this question of like, “well, is it even possible within the dynamic or structure that renting implies and incurs, is it even possible to create a dynamic wherein a person can be understood as a guest in another person's home, and another person can be understood as a host to people who are coming to live in their home? Right? That that same [00:41:00] woman, the 55-year-old landlord said that she had tenants who refused to leave for, I dunno, a year and a half or two years, and once they finally did, left her with a $40,000 damage bill. So, I think there's just layers and layers that are extremely difficult to kind of get into, I shouldn't say in terms of dialogue, in terms of investigation, but in terms of the possibility of creating different dynamics that would maybe represent or produce the kinds of dynamics and worlds that, I think, a lot of people would want to live in.Leslie: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think in a lot of cases, and you honestly don't have to dig very deep, you can open up CBC News and see some poor, sad landlord story most days of the week or listen to kind of corporate or larger scale landlords talk and they often see tenants as a nuisance.“The tenants themselves are a problem,” and if they could invest in real estate and still make [00:42:00] these returns without actually having tenants, that would probably be ideal. And I think that is also part of the push to an Airbnb is that with a temporary guest, you know, a week, a weekend or whatever, you don't have the same responsibility to them as you do to someone with a year lease or perhaps the right to stay there for a longer period of time. So, all you have to do is kind of provide this very basic amenity of the space. You can even impose all these rules on them that you maybe otherwise wouldn't be able to do if it was a longer-term rental.You know, the people who check-in have many fewer rights than actual tenants do. And so in some ways it makes that relationship even more transactional and even more hands off in many cases. And of course there's the quicker profit motive is really the main driving force behind that. But I think there's also this piece of it where it's like, “well, how can I maximize the profit potential of this space with as little actually dealing with other human beings and their needs [00:43:00] as human beings as possible.And yeah, I think that is really, again, from my kind of feminist perspective, that is also interested in thinking about how do we create systems of care in our cities, and what does “care” mean, and what are our responsibilities to one another that, when we look at something like Airbnbification and the touristification and gentrification more generally, those things, in many cases kind of act against the possibility of creating more caring and careful spaces.Chris: Hmm, hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that, Leslie. I have a couple more questions for you, if that's all right?Leslie: Yes, go ahead. Yeah.Chris: All right. Wonderful. So this next question maybe requires a bit of imagination, which I think you have a good amount of, and it has to do with rent.And so one of the lies that you highlight in your book is the belief that gentrification is natural and hence forth inevitable. [00:44:00] And of course, as we've been discussing, nothing is natural nor inevitable and you make an excellent case for that throughout the book. And I feel that there is an equally and perhaps more subtle incarnation of this myth, of this inevitability, in regards to rent, that we as urban people or modern people who grow up in contemporary societies often reinforce and even naturalize a kind of rent slavery that most people rarely see, that most people rarely see their lives as indentured to their landlords.And so, when we talk about gentrification, does this show up at all? Should it? You know, this notion that, “well, if we can come to gentrification and understand that it's in fact not natural and it's not inevitable, can we do the same thing for rent? Because, maybe I haven't read much of the research, but it doesn't seem to be something that [00:45:00] people are so quick to aim their arrows at, we'll say.Leslie: Yeah. I love that question. And I think A, you're right that there hasn't been enough conversation about that. There has not been nearly enough attempts to kind of denaturalize this and B, that that perspective is emerging and growing. If I could recommend a book called The Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan. It's also a Toronto-based author, and he does an amazing job in this very short book of basically laying out the case against landlordism, and it totally, as you say, kind of denaturalizing and pushes back on this idea that it's inevitable that there are a class of people that own property and a class of people that rent property, and that this is not inherently a deeply problematic relation. You know, this idea that it's not in some way akin to some kind of indentureship. And he really asks us to look deeply again at this [00:46:00] idea that, if you're a landlord, “well, I have a mortgage to pay, so it's somehow natural that this other person will pay my mortgage for me,” which, when you start to think about it, like it's really messed up in a way. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. So yeah, I think looking more closely at some of these ideas, these kind of statements that come out, and again, you can see it in news articles, these kind of horror stories, and not to diminish, I'm sure, what are very real, like economic and psychological impacts of the so-called kind of nightmare tenant and all of those kinds of things.But you'll hear those kinds of statements: “you know, I have a mortgage to pay.”Well, why is this other person paying your mortgage, then?And then we could probably take a step back and be like, “why do we have mortgages to pay?” But that's maybe another conversation.But yeah, so I definitely recommend that book, The Tenant Class, as a really quick, easy to read, and kind of unforgettable primer on this question. And [00:47:00] I really appreciate you asking it, and I hope your listeners will be like, “oh, yeah, I gotta dig into that a bit more too.”Chris: Yeah.Yeah. I mean, you know, in part because, as prices have risen in most western countries in the last four or five years, there's of course, of course, protests and backlash among people, and “oh, this bakery raised their prices” or “ my rent's going up,” and all these things. But specifically in terms of products and services, you know, people complain or they just accept the fact that prices have risen to a degree that's pricing a lot of people out of their lives, really. But, you know, in the conversations I've had with people and in the literature that I've read, there's no consideration, I think, that the businesses who are raising their prices have had their rents raised, that so much of a business' costs include rent, right? And that very few businesses actually [00:48:00] own the building that they're working out of.Leslie: Yeah, commercial rent is a whole other story because, you know, the protections on residential rent are not what they could be in most places around the world, but there's no protections on commercial rent, like no limitations there. So it's entirely possible that local bakery, their rent could go up by, like double. It could go up from $20,000 a year to $60,000 a year. There's no restrictions on that. There's nowhere to appeal that. There's nothing. So, they are, in some ways, even those small businesses, especially, independent businesses and so on, are very at risk of this. And there's a whole branch of kind of retail gentrification studies as well that kind of looks at the impacts on the local economic landscape of things like this as well. Yeah.Chris: Hmm. Wow. Thank you for unveiling that for us. I mean, uh, so much.So my last question, Leslie, has to do [00:49:00] with what is mentioned in your book, what you refer to as “the right to stay put.”And so,“the right to stay put is a common rallying cry in response to the dangers of displacement. Drawing inspiration from the broader notion of the right to the city, the right to stay put insists that communities are entitled to remain in the places they have contributed to. Furthermore, the right to dwell extends beyond simply having a home in an area, encompassing the right to continue using commercial, community, and public spaces and institutions, as well as the dignity of defending such rights. Importantly, it recognizes that agency is a critical factor. People do not want to be forced to move, nor do they want to be forced to stay in place. Rather, people value choice, the ability to participate in [00:50:00] decisions that affect their communities and the right to resist when they need to.”And so I'm curious what you think it would take for people, say, in urban environments to achieve or enshrine the right to stay put or the right to dwell in their places.Leslie: Yeah, I think we could talk about kind of two main avenues. One would be more of the top-down approach, which is to work to enshrine anti-displacement measures in neighborhoods, which can include everything from rent control or rent stabilization, to the right to return when there are redevelopment projects going on, to deeply affordable housing in new developments, to communities themselves taking on the role of becoming developers, but creating housing within the community for the [00:51:00] community. Not to draw in new residents or not to primarily draw new residents. Again, we're not trying to like, build a fortress around communities or anything, but rather to say, “this is housing that we're earmarking for people from the local community who are struggling with their rent or struggling to find housing, or who need perhaps entry-level home ownership opportunities and to kind of provide that.So there's the kind of top-down approach, really pushing our local governments to have things like community benefit ordinances when new developments are happening that force developers to actually pay attention to what the community needs and to provide those benefits and such.And then, from the kind of ground-up or more grassroots piece, the right to stay put is the the willingness, the ability to organize and come together in some of the places that I mentioned throughout the book. You know, it really [00:52:00] is community-level organization where people have really rallied to make it deeply difficult for planners or developers to kind of roll in and roll out their vision without any pushbacks, to the extent that their neighbourhoods become less of a target for gentrification, because it's like, “oh yeah, we wanna build something there. Oh, that's gonna be a real pain in the butt. The community is not gonna let us get away with what we wanna do.” And that means really making it possible for people to come out to meetings, organizing protests, that kind of right to resist. Sometimes taking... You know, we have long histories in many cities of squatters movements and perhaps we need to revitalize some of that old energy, as well. A kind of refusal to leave. And to find ways, you know, perhaps they don't always have to be kind of in-your-face protest ways, but what are ways to mobilize things like mutual aid to help make sure that our [00:53:00] neighbors are supported, for example, if they have to go before a landlord-tenant board, how can we use community resources and knowledge to actually support one another to stay in place?And that can be everything from addressing food insecurity to having a local rent bank, to partnering with nonprofits, churches, other religious institutions that may have an interest in building social and nonprofit housing to create some of those options.So I think it's about looking at the kind of wide range of alternative forms of housing and housing provision, looking at community mobilizing, community resources, and also tackling the local policy agenda to make staying put as possible, or to enshrine it as a right at a kind of higher level, as well.Chris: Hmm, hmm. Yeah, you go into [00:54:00] great detail about this in the book, and I'm very grateful for that. And the right to stay put kind of jumped out, the text jumped out of the page at me, because living here in Oaxaca, I came to know about this declaration that was created in 2009 by people in a number of communities here in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca who were meeting with their migrant kin who had gone to work in California and the people who had stayed in the community.And the declaration is literally translated as “the right to not migrate.” The way it was translated in English by the author of the book of the same name, was “The Right to Stay Home.” And so while there's a lot of differences between these contexts in terms of rural, indigenous communities here in Mexico and modern urban communities in the global north, there is this sense, [00:55:00] this kind of perhaps shared context wherein the ability to to stay in a place in order so that community can be conjured and maintained and of course enjoyed and lived in, seems to thread its way through these different social movements from the global north into the global south.So, I'm really grateful to see that and to know that there's similar understandings, of course not the same, but similar understandings that are even somewhat unorthodox and unexpected given the political context that sometimes challenge them or preclude something like that from coming up.So that's a little way of saying thank you for your time today, Leslie. On behalf of our listeners, I'd like to thank you for your willingness to join me and to speak to these often complex issues. And on behalf of them, I'd also like to ask you how they might find out more about [00:56:00] your work and your books: Gentrification Is Inevitable And Other Lies, Feminist City: Claiming Space In A Manmade World, and finally Higher Expectations: How To Survive Academia, Make It Better For Others, And Transform The University.Leslie: Yeah, thank you so much for this conversation. People can find out about me and my work at my website, which is just lesliekern.ca.If you just google my name, it will come up easily enough. Feminist City and Gentrification Is Inevitable And Other Lies. For an international audience, you can find those books through Verso books in the US and UK. There's also many translations of both of those books, so you may have the opportunity to read it in your local language if you want to do that as well.The more recent book, Higher Expectations is available from my Canadian publisher Between the Lines Books and in the US [00:57:00] from AK Books, as well. And there's also Epub versions and for the first two books, audiobook versions as well. And I've written lots of articles on these topics as well, in the Guardian and other places.So you can get a little snippet of my thoughts if you, again, Google my name and all of these things will come up in short order. So thank you for letting me share that as well.Chris: Yeah, of course. I'll make sure that the links to all those pages that you mentioned are available on the End of Tourism website and the Substack when the episode launches.And once again, Leslie, a really beautifully revealing conversation today. I think it's something that will not just provoke generally, but provoke a willingness in our listeners to reconsider some of the assumptions that they've had about gentrification.So, once again, thank you for your time today.Leslie: Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. Appreciate it. Get full access to Chris Christou at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode Thoughts Unlocked, Skot Waldron delves into the pervasive issue of imposter syndrome, a phenomenon affecting over 70% of professionals. He discusses its roots in perfectionism and comparison, and offers practical strategies for overcoming self-doubt. By collecting evidence of achievements, reframing failure, and borrowing confidence from others, individuals can combat the negative effects of imposter syndrome. Skot emphasizes that while this feeling can be humbling, it should not dictate one's career path. Ultimately, he encourages listeners to recognize their worth and capabilities. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:12 Imposter Syndrome   02:15 What Imposter Syndrome Really Is and Who Experiences It   02:49 The Role of Comparison and Self-Belief   03:20 Recognizing Imposter Thoughts – "I Just Got Lucky" and Other Lies   03:57 Cognitive Distortion – How Your Brain Plays Tricks on You   04:09 Step 1: Collect Evidence – Keep a Brag File or Success Journal   04:37 Step 2: Reframe Failure as Proof You're Growing   05:06 Step 3: Borrow Confidence Until Yours Shows Up   05:36 Turning Imposter Syndrome Into an Advantage   06:05 Handling the Inner Voice – "Hand It a Juice Box"   07:01 Outro Website: skotwaldron.com

Notes and Links to Larry Strauss' Work    Larry Strauss is the author of five novels, most recently Light Man and Now's the Time—now an Earphone Award winning audiobook—and numerous non-fiction titles, including Students First and Other Lies, a collection of essays mostly about education, and 2025's A Lasting Impact in the Classroom and Beyond, a guide for new and struggling teachers.   His short fiction has appeared in Streetlight, Extract(s), and elsewhere. Op-eds and other non-fiction have appeared in USA Today, for which he is an opinion columnist, and The Guardian, among others. If you grew up in the 1980s, you might have seen some of the episodes he wrote for the first-generation Transformers cartoons.  Buy A Lasting Impact in the Classroom and Beyond   Larry Strauss' Article Listing   The Chills at Will Podcast, Episode 83, with Larry Strauss At about 1:45, Larry highlights positive feedback for his book, including a lawyer who found the book so instructive At about 4:50, Larry recounts a tale from the book's Preface,  At about 7:40, Larry talks about the “contagion” that is fun that can and should come with teaching, and how this relates to him wanting to write the book At about 9:20, Larry talks about his first teaching job allowed him to “find [his] way” At about 10:30, Larry reflects on a Catch-22 that balances systematic change and day-to-day work At about 13:10, Larry recounts conversations dealing with guilt for teachers in taking days off At about 15:20, Larry talks about administration and the demands they feel and what they ask of teachers At about 16:00, The two discuss the travails of teaching during the early days of the Covid pandemic-Larry had an active 40 person class! At about 20:30, Larry reflects on ideas of “saving kids” as a teacher  At about 23:55, Larry talks about learning, including in literature, as “life-saving” and “writers as the first psychologists"  At about 25:30, The two discuss cinematic displays of teaching and “inspirational” teaching At about 28:25, The two reflect on early days for teachers and ideas of teaching “authenticity” At about 33:30, Larry talks about At about 34:25, Larry references Willy Loman in talking about “salesman” as one of the myriad roles that a teacher plays, and Pete cites extracurriculars like basketball and the difference in working with students in a voluntary situation  At about 36:20, Larry expands on his first year(s) teaching and ways in which students bought in  At about 39:00, The two discuss the importance of passion and enthusiasm and getting to know students At about 40:40, Larry responds to Pete's question about how he came to understand that a loud classroom is not necessarily a bad thing At about 44:10, Larry recounts a story of a former student discovering journalism stories that already existed in his life At about 45:30, Larry reflects on a revelation he had about never surrendering to resistant learners and about how all/most students want to learn At about 47:25, the two talk about being adaptable as students both change and remain the same At about 50:20, Larry draws a distinction between talking about students' incredible qualities versus complaining to other teachers about the students At about 52:45, Larry talks about a second-generation student and parent complaints  At about 55:25, Larry and Pete discuss the need for adaptability and “improv” as a teacher, illustrated by a lesson that has become a stalwart At about 57:20, The two discuss the need for joy and empathy in the midst of sadness and the grind of teaching-a great Cain and Abel story! At about 58:50, The two discuss the pros and cons of small schools At about 1:05:15, Pete highlights an early publication of Larry's as the two talk about supporting the students unconditionally  At about 1:07:00, The two discuss different ways of being an advocate as a teacher At about 1:08:10, Pete compliments the book's mixture of art and science At about 1:08:45, Larry talks about unique new writing assignments for himself At about 1:11:30, in talking about horrible hires for US Secretary of Education, Larry highlights the way in which John King's fifth-grade teacher “saved his life” through field trips and other ways      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Jeff Pearlman, a recent guest, is up soon at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, DIY podcast and extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    This month's Patreon bonus episode features an exploration of formative and transformative writing for children, as Pete surveys wonderful writers on their own influences.    Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.     This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 321 with Carolina Ixta, a writer from Oakland, California. Her debut novel, Shut Up, This Is Serious, was a Morris Award finalist, an LA Times Book Prize finalist, and the winner of the Pura Belpré Award. Few Blue Skies is her sophomore novel, forthcoming from HarperCollins on February 3, 2026.    The episode airs on February 3, Pub Day.    Please go to ceasefiretoday.org, and/or https://act.uscpr.org/a/letaidin to call your congresspeople and demand an end to the forced famine and destruction of Gaza and the Gazan people.

The primary focus of this podcast episode revolves around the exploration of sacred sisterhood, as discussed with our esteemed guest, Natalie, who is introducing her forthcoming book entitled "I Don't Even Like Women and the Other Lies that Get in the Way of Sacred Sisterhood." Throughout our conversation, we delve into the complexities and challenges women face in forming genuine friendships, particularly within the context of church communities, where competition and gossip often create barriers to connection. Natalie shares her personal experiences of feeling rejected by women, illustrating the need for deeper, more meaningful relationships that transcend superficiality. We examine the importance of fostering supportive and encouraging environments, where women can uplift one another rather than compete. Ultimately, this episode serves as a clarion call to embrace the beauty and necessity of sacred friendships, urging listeners to cultivate connections that are both enriching and transformative.Takeaways: The podcast explores the significance of sacred sisterhood and the complexities involved in female friendships. Natalie's forthcoming book, entitled "I Don't Even Like Women," addresses the obstacles women face in forming lasting connections. Listeners are encouraged to confront feelings of rejection and to strive towards building meaningful relationships despite past hurts. The discussion emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence in navigating female friendships and mitigating destructive behaviors such as gossip.

In this episode of the OnStage Colorado Podcast, hosts Alex Miller and Toni Tresca look at some recent A&E news — including the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's season announcement and a chat with Ballyhoo Table & Stage founder Julia Tobey on the new venue's grand opening this Saturday.Later in the podcast, Alex chats with Scot Merchant, creator of the new musical Ichabod, which has its world premiere at Denver's Mizel Center Oct. 30.Also in this episode, the Top 10 Colorado Headliners — upcoming shows from around Colorado that may be worth checking out. Here's the list in no particular order:Ghostlight, Oct. 29, Oct. 31, Nov. 1 and Nov. 12, at various venues in the Denver metro areaEdgar Allan Poe Is Dead and So Is My Cat, Oct. 31-Nov. 16, Buntport Theater, DenverLa Traviata, Nov. 1-9, Ellie Caulkins Opera House, DenverHedwig and the Angry Inch - remount, Nov. 6-23, Ballyhoo, DenverR.U.R., Nov. 6-23, Spring Ensemble Theatre, Colorado Springs, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Schoolhouse Theater, Parker, through Nov. 16Dracula, Main St. Live, Trinidad, through Nov. 2Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors, Denver Center Garner Galleria, through May 10Misery, OpenStage at Fort Collins Lincoln Center, Oct. 31-Nov. 29Alibis & Other Lies, What If Theatre, Lakewood, through Nov. 1

Alisa Childers is a wife, mom, author, and speaker. She was a member of the award-winning CCM recording group ZOEgirl. She is a popular speaker at apologetics and Christian worldview conferences. Alisa is the author of Another Gospel?, Live Your Truth and Other Lies, and The Deconstruction of Christianity.https://www.amazon.com/s?k=alisa+childers+book&adgrpid=1344703284951485&hvadid=84044170256499&hvbmt=bp&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=42552&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=p&hvtargid=kwd-84044298817268%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=26075_13464915&mcid=d63cc4c960863cc290add734bc9dc164&tag=mh0b-20&ref=pd_sl_22bvkgh7_p

Have you ever felt out of place in women’s friendships, even within the church? You’re not alone. My guest, Natalie Runion—author of I Don’t Even Like Women and Other Lies that Get in the Way of Sacred Sisterhood—shares her honest journey from feeling disconnected to finding purpose in women’s ministry. Together, we explore how authentic connection and encouragement can break down barriers of competition and replace them with collaboration. From the beauty of multi-generational friendships to the role of encouragement in sisterhood, Natalie reminds us that humility and honesty are game changers. This conversation offers hope, practical wisdom, and a roadmap for cultivating real, life-giving friendships rooted in faith. And remember, I'd love to connect more on Instagram, where you'll find me at @donnaajones. Xo, Donna PS. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode! Listen in to learn more : (04:24) The Importance of Women's Relationships (08:25) Exploring Sacred Sisterhood in Scriptures (21:16) Assumptions and Conflict in Relationships (29:04) Importance of Women's Sacred Sisterhood Donna’s Resources: Order a copy of my latest book - Healthy Conflict, Peaceful Life: A Biblical Guide to Communicating Thoughts, Feelings, and Opinions with Grace, Truth, and Zero Regret. It is available anywhere books are sold– here is the link on Amazon. If you need a helpful resource for someone exploring faith and Christianity or simply want to strengthen your own knowledge, you’ll want a copy of my book, Seek: A Woman’s Guide to Meeting God. It’s a must for seekers, new believers, and those who want to be more confident in their faith! Connect with Natalie Runion Instagram :https://www.instagram.com/raisedtostay/ Website: https://natalierunion.com/ Pick up a copy of her book - I Don’t Even Like Women and Other Lies that Get in the Way of Sacred Sisterhood https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Even-Like-Women-Sisterhood/dp/0830786708 Connect with Donna Instagram: @donnaajones Website: www.donnajones.org Donna’s speaking schedule: https://donnajones.org/events/ Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Recounting both firsthand experience and repro-political history, Kelley Fox and Rev. Terry Williams help listeners see the explicit connection between anti-abortion ideology and modern political violence in the U.S. Catalyzed by the recent assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, Kelley and Terry explain why it's no big surprise that Rep. Hortman's assassin also targeted abortion workers in his destructive quest. Revisiting historical examples of anti-abortion violence, this episode also provides listeners with concrete steps to achieve focus, maintain perspective, and keep pressing forward in the fight for abortion justice and reproductive freedom. Links to discussed show notes: Abortion providers devastated by political killings, hit list: thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5353386-abortion-providers-targeted-missouri-shooting/amp 'God Sent the Shooter,' & Other Lies by Political Extremists, by Rev. Terry Williams: www.faithchoiceohio.org/blog/2019/5/31/god-sent-the-shooter The Army of God: newreligiousmovements.org/a/army-of-god Video of "Cry Night" at an Evangelical Camp: www.tiktok.com/@emhahee/video/7246223464242105643 PRIDE 2025 with Faith Choice Ohio: www.faithchoiceohio.org/pride Finding Small Joys in a Summer of Turmoil, by Kelley Fox: www.faithchoiceohio.org/blog/finding-small-joys-in-a-summer-of-turmoil Music by Korbin Jones

Time Artist Title Duration Album Year 0:00:00 ProgPhonic 183 Intro 0:41 0:00:38 Styx Build And Destroy 3:49 Build And Destroy 2025 0:06:17 Lesoir Dystopia 6:32 Mosaic 2020 0:12:49 Amarok Canticle 5:11 Metanoia 2004 0:17:59 Gravity Fields Rage 5:21 Disruption 2023 0:28:14 Pryzme End of the Anger 8:42 True Stories… and Other Lies 2025 0:36:56 Pryzme […]

Kelley Fox and Rev. Terry Williams take time to honor the life and story of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider who was murdered while serving as an usher at his church on May 31, 2009. Centering the episode on the life of Dr. Tiller, Kelley and Terry connect the dots between violent religious extremism and anti-abortion acts of terror, drawing the link between forces at play in the murder of Dr. Tiller and modern violence against reproductive health providers as recent as this year. Faith Choice Ohio's liturgical resources for use in your own Tiller Observance are also discussed — with the episode closing in a powerful prayer from the 2025 Tiller Observance Resource Guide. Links to discussed content Palm Springs IVF Clinic Bombing: www.npr.org/2025/05/19/nx-s1-5403669/what-we-know-palm-springs-ivf-clinic-bombing New Faith4Repro Store (with "Keep Your Theology Off My Biology" merch): www.faithchoiceohio.org/store 2025 Tiller Observance Resource Guide (with prayers, reflections, and video content for use by congregations and individuals): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MT7FQGxq_8GK7ghNpw_ytvtjVXO_Hoi7?usp=drive_link Killing the Black Body, by Dorothy Roberts: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/155575/killing-the-black-body-by-dorothy-roberts/ A Brief History of Deadly Attacks on Abortion Providers: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/29/us/30abortion-clinic-violence.html The Anti-Abortion Roots of Christian Nationalism: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-christian-nationalism-abortion-ban-b2629614.html  "'God Sent the Shooter' & Other Lies by Religious Extremists," a blog article by Rev. Terry Williams: www.faithchoiceohio.org/blog/2019/5/31/god-sent-the-shooter "Worth It All," a blog article by Rev. Terry Williams: www.faithchoiceohio.org/blog/worth-it-all Music by Korbin Jones

Send us a textCan understanding human motivations truly transform corporate culture? Join us as we sit with the insightful Christy Claxton, a lesbian musician and writer, who reveals the soul-sucking realities of corporate life and how she managed to maintain her creative spirit amidst it all. Christy shares her journey from being a middle manager for over 30 years to rediscovering her passion for writing after being laid off. Her new book, "Bringing Jesus and Other Lies," offers a candid look at her life experiences, and she shares invaluable lessons on leadership and creativity that challenge the status quo.In another turn of the episode, we delve into the transformative power of education and storytelling. Inspired by past encounters with influential teachers, we explore narratives that challenge societal perceptions and reflect on the intersection of corporate careers and artistic pursuits. Our discussion includes touching anecdotes from a collection of stories about unlikely friendships, such as a young offender taking his former teacher on a motorcycle adventure. We also ponder the broader implications of personal stories and their resonance with audiences, drawing from experiences that have shaped our creative paths over the years.Artistic innovation takes center stage as we spotlight Candice D'Meza, a multidisciplinary artist who blends Afrofuturism with unique theatrical productions. From exploring themes of queer futures to challenging identity constructs, Candice's work pushes boundaries and invites audiences to imagine a world where nature and humanity coexist harmoniously. Her latest production, "Miss LaRaj's House of Dystopian Futures," and her other projects highlight the liberating aspects of defying societal norms. We celebrate how artists like Candice and musicians like Lee Harris inspire us to break free creatively and redefine our future narratives.Be free, people!  Queer Voices airs in Houston Texas on 90.1FM KPFT and is heard as a podcast here. Queer Voices hopes to entertain as well as illuminate LGBTQ issues in Houston and beyond. Check out our socials at:https://www.facebook.com/QueerVoicesKPFT/ andhttps://www.instagram.com/queervoices90.1kpft/

Shownotes are done by Ai and so is the edit. It's a little choppy at times, but it will do. Ed is a good friend of the podcast and an excellent guest.The audiobook can be found here:Facts and Other Lies by Ed Coper - Audiobook - Audible.com.auand the actual book in places that hopefully aren't amazon.In the meantime, buy CBCo beer. Discount code is CRP10. It's good. Trust me.Here's what the robots think of the show! Enjoy.-----------------------------------------------------------------Navigating the Disinformation Age: An Interview with Ed CoperIn this episode of the Conditional Release Program, host Joel Hill welcomes Ed Coper, author of 'Facts and Other Lies: Welcome to the Disinformation Age.' The episode explores various aspects of the modern disinformation landscape shaped by the post-truth era.Coper's book, published in 2023, delves into academic research and real-world examples of disinformation, sprinkled with humor. The discussion highlights the role of social media, echo chambers, and the psychological aspects that make disinformation hard to combat. The conversation also covers pre-bunking vs. debunking techniques, the evolving role of AI in spreading disinformation, the influence of tech companies like Facebook and Twitter, and the necessity of a robust digital literacy curriculum. Future election campaigns and the role of disinformation are also discussed, with a focus on practical steps individuals can take to promote factual information.Timestamps:00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome00:19 Book Overview: Facts and Other Lies01:21 The Disinformation Age03:24 Information Tribes and Social Dynamics08:55 Shared Reality and Media Fragmentation13:57 Debunking vs. Prebunking22:58 The Rise of AI and Bots29:10 Media Literacy and the Next Generation35:49 The Attention Economy and Rage Bait41:13 The Illusion of Immunity to Disinformation43:32 Internet Arguments and Social Media Dynamics48:39 The Participatory Nature of Conspiracy Theories55:22 Disinformation in the Upcoming Federal Election01:00:36 Meta's Shift and the Influence of Tech Giants01:08:58 TikTok's Precarious Position and Authoritarian Influence01:15:02 Closing Thoughts on Disinformation

Ever wondered why some neighborhoods transform seemingly overnight while others remain unchanged? This episode looks into the complex web of gentrification through three articles published in the last few years. We kick off with a deep dive into the term's origins and its multifaceted meanings, drawing from an insightful article by Planetizen. Along the way, we tackle the often misunderstood triggers of gentrification and challenge the conventional wisdom that luxury condos are the main culprits, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as discussed in a compelling piece from The Atlantic.We then shift gears to explore recurring trends, comparing shifts from the early 20th century with those from the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on Leslie Kern's book, "Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies," we unravel how remote work is shaping smaller cities and the varied pressures behind gentrification across regions. Our discussion underscores the necessity of involving local residents in community development to ensure new amenities benefit existing communities, not just newcomers. We also highlight the limitations of market-rate housing and call for improved public engagement in urban planning. This episode is packed with nuanced insights and actionable ideas to better understand and address the complexities of gentrification.Show Notes:Episode Articles:The Pandemic Disproved Urban Progressives' Theory About Gentrification: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/dc-solar-power-ponzi-scheme-scandal/673782/Gentrification is Complicated. But It's Not Inevitable: https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/gentrification-is-inevitable-and-other-lies-leslie-kern What Is Gentrification? https://www.planetizen.com/definition/gentrification PlanetMoney Reel on Gentrification: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8U3_b4vFCW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com/Episode artwork by Georgia de Lotz on UnsplashFollow us on social media for more content related to each episode:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/booked-on-planning/Twitter: https://twitter.com/BookedPlanningFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookedonplanningInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookedonplanning/

Please go to Firefly Creative Writing to see if any of our cozy writing workshops are for you. The Fall schedule will be on the website for July 11th. For $50 off, use code: FATJOYCrystal Maldonado (she/her) is a young adult author with a lot of feelings that she's channeled into romcoms for fat, brown girls. She shares what it was like to write the stories she wished she'd had when she was growing up, the gatekeeping she had to overcome to get published, and her ‘glimmers' writing practice that connects her to joy each day. Crystal has written several books, including The Fall of Whit Rivera, which People Magazine called a “pumpkin-spice-latte-flavored treat”; Fat Chance, Charlie Vega, which was a New England Book Award winner, a Cosmopolitan Best New Book, and a Kirkus Best YA Fiction of 2021; and No Filter and Other Lies, which was named a POPSUGAR and Seventeen Best New YA. Her middle grade debut, Camp Sylvania: Moon Madness—a paranormal summer camp story featuring two fat besties, co-written with #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Murphy—releases in spring 2024.Please connect with through her website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and tiktok. This episode's poem is called “My friends got married today…” by Yesika Salgado.Connect with Fat Joy on the website, Instagram, subscribe to the Fat Joy newsletter, and watch full video episodes on YouTube. Want to share some fattie love? Please rate this podcast and give it a joyful review. Our thanks to Chris Jones and AR Media for keeping this podcast looking and sounding joyful.

When we first saw the talk titled “Space Aliens Are Among Us, Your Product Roadmap is Realistic and Other Lies you Believe,” we knew we had to sit down with Best Egg's Johnny Ray Austin at LeadingEng SF last year.Johnny joined our host Conor Bronsdon to discuss how engineering leaders can navigate unrealistic expectations and pressures, drawing from his experiences and relating product roadmaps to the less-than-tangible UFO disclosure we've seen in recent years. The conversation explores the pressures engineering leaders face, how to align product roadmaps realistically, and how to manage ambiguity within teams.By aligning engineering goals with business objectives and building a transparent, high-performing engineering culture, you can give your teams the context they need to drive focus and concentration toward the right outcomes.Episode Highlights: 1:36 Where Johnny came up with the talk title "Space Aliens Are Among Us" 4:15 Advice for engineering leaders struggling with roadmap realism 6:44 Cutting through the noise to find the metrics that matter 11:41 How do teams know if they're moving fast in the right direction? 14:58 How do you handle teams that are getting the wrong input? 20:32 Lies we tell ourselves that we need to get past 28:32 What it's like to create a new unit inside a company 33:53 Identifying and dealing with ambiguity on your teams 40:45 Johnny's Thoughts on AIShow NotesDownload your complimentary Gartner® Market Guide: Software Engineering Intelligence (SEI) PlatformsJohnny Ray AustinPersonal Loans | Quick & Easy Application | Best EggSupport the show: Subscribe to our Substack Leave us a review Subscribe on YouTube Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn Offers: Learn about Continuous Merge with gitStream Get your DORA Metrics free forever

Influenced by her former careers as a psychologist and a business owner, author Maggie Smith pens compelling stories of ordinary women who face extraordinary challenges with grit, brainpower, and strong doses of empathy and humor. She hosts the podcast Hear Us Roar and is managing editor of The Write City Magazine.From the author of the award-winning Truth and Other Lies comes Blind Spot - a gripping suspense novel about an ambitious prosecutor on the hunt for her sadistic stalker, only to be framed for murder when he turns up dead. Fans of Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent will embrace this taut tale of long-simmering revenge right up to its surprising and twisty climax.

Our current society has a big worldview problem.Today for Wildcard Wednesday, We Talk About WorldviewToday, we talk about John Mark Comer's book Live No Lies, and two ideas that he really helped me clarify:What was the biggest idealogical mindset shift in Western civilization in the past 200 years?What cultural credo did we pick up from Shakespeare, and why is it so ironic?Today's Mind Change Monday episode gets into the philosophical underpinnings of modern Western thought, and two lies of the devil that have shaped so many people's thoughts on happiness:Live your truthWhat makes you unhappy is anyone telling you what to do or not to doImprove your gut health, immune system, and protect your brain with Pique!Books mentioned:Live No Lies by John Mark ComerFaithfully Different by Natasha CrainLive Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa ChildersThe Daniel Dilemma by Chris HodgesLeave a voicemail with your question or comment!Five Ways You Can Support this show:Pray for us!Subscribe, like, and share it with your friends! (We even have a YouTube channel!)Leave reviews and comments wherever you listen to podcasts!You can become a paid partner of the podcast and get special bonus episodes and lots more content by clicking here. Visit one of our affiliate partners and consider using their products (we use them every day):Improve your gut health, immune system, and protect your brain with Pique!Other Helpful Links:Click here to access the Hope Is the First Dose playlist of hopeful, healing songs!Be sure to check out my new book, Hope Is the First Dose!Here's a free 5-day Bible study on YouVersion/BibleApp based on my new book!Sign up for my weekly Self-Brain Surgery Newsletter here!All recent episodes with transcripts are available here! (00:01) - Introduction (00:39) - The Impact of Trauma (01:33) - Influence of John Mark Comer (02:34) - Guarding Your Worldview (03:14) - Reminder on Worldview Stewardship (04:26) - Guiding Others to Truth (05:51) - Commitment to Change (11:03) - Influence of Secular Worldview (12:45) - Pursuit of Happiness and Truth (16:23) - Unmasking Cultural Ideals (20:59) - The Importance of Order in Desires (26:20) - Deception of "Be True to Yourself" (28:27) - True Identity & Happiness (29:58) - Conclusion & Book Promotion

Sit down with Jonathan Youssef for a compelling conversation with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, authors of The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is. Why It's Destructive. How to Respond. This discussion examines the pervasive and unsettling movement of faith deconstruction sweeping churches today. Whether it's affecting your loved ones, straining relationships, or stirring doubts within you, this episode provides crucial understanding and guidance.Together, we will try to understand the core aspects of the Christian deconstruction movement, its origins, the meaning of deconstruction hashtags like #exvangelical, and why it attracts so many people, particularly those disenchanted with traditional church teachings.Alisa and Tim offer strategies for thoughtfully and empathetically engaging with those questioning or abandoning their faith in Christ, emphasizing responses grounded in a biblical worldview.Whether you are seeking to support a loved one in turmoil, understand the dramatic spiritual changes around you, or find answers to your spiritual doubts, Alisa and Tim provide valuable insights and answers that promise to enlighten, challenge, and encourage.Listen and gain tools and confidence to address deconstruction with clarity and love, ensuring your faith and relationships can withstand the challenges of these transformative times.ALISA CHILDERS is a popular speaker and the author of Another Gospel? and Live Your Truth and Other Lies. She has been published at the Gospel Coalition, Crosswalk, the Stream, For Every Mom, Decision magazine, and the Christian Post.TIM BARNETT is a speaker and apologist for Stand to Reason (STR). His online presence on Red Pen Logic with Mr. B helps people assess flawed thinking using good thinking, reaching millions monthly through multiple social media platforms.After you listen to this episode, you may have questions. We would love to hear from you! To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidAlso, join the conversation on our social media pages:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpodTRANSCRIPT:This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 246: The Deconstruction of Christianity with Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett.Jonathan: Today, we have quite a special situation. We have two of my favorite guests that we've had in the past, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett. And they have teamed up and have written a book together, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive and How To Respond. Thank you guys so much for taking the time. We're all across the nation and different nations here. Thank y'all for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.Alisa: It's great to be back with you.Tim: Yeah, it's good to see you.Jonathan: Well, I think before we jump in we've Alisa and I and Tim and I, we've separately had conversations around this area, but I love the way you break down your book into these three parts: Exvangelical, Deconstruction, and Hope. But just again for those who are new to the terminology, let's define deconstruction and separate it and define exvangelical, and then we'll talk about the reasons for the writing of the book.Alisa: Which one you want to take, Tim, exvangelical or deconstruction?Jonathan: You each get one.Tim: All right. I'll start with deconstruction. You know this is a tough definition to nail down. In fact, this took quite some research and quite some time. In fact, I actually changed my mind on how I was using the term. At least initially when I started teaching in deconstruction a few years ago, I thought there was a way that we could use the word deconstruction in a healthy way and there was a way we could use it in an unhealthy way. And we were seeing this kind of thing happening, especially on social media. You'd have people like Lecrae or John Mark Holmer or other notable evangelicals using deconstruction as a healthy way, here's a good way to do deconstruction.Tim: That's right. And on the other hand, there's a whole lot of this other stuff that's very unhealthy. That's how we originally thought until we did serious research into what's going on in this deconstruction space, especially on social media where we're seeing a movement or an explosion. And what we saw there was that there isn't anything healthy. In fact, there are defining characteristics of the deconstruction explosion that are unbiblical and just completely wrongheaded.So at the end of the day, where we landed on this—and again, we say this is the hardest sentence we wrote in the book, but here's where we landed on our definition of deconstruction: It's a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring Scripture as a standard. And all those words are important in that sentence. So it's a process, but it's a very specific kind of process. It's a postmodern process. Whereas where you would think (this is what many claim) is that they are on a search for truth, what we're finding is that it's not really about truth—in fact, by postmodern we mean that there isn't a goal of truth; there's actually a denial of objective truth, that objective truth cannot be known. And so there's that on the one hand. On the other hand, you have this rejection of Scripture as an authority. And so when we put those things together, we think these are the defining characteristics of what deconstruction is all about. And we can kind of go into more detail and give some examples of where we've seen that, but that's a starting point.Alisa: Right and then the exvangelical hashtag is often used synonymously with and at least in conjunction with that deconstruction hashtag. And it's a little bit of a tricky hashtag because it doesn't simply mean, at face value, no longer evangelical. But it's not like you have people who were raised Presbyterian and they become some kind of more liturgical Anglican or something and they use the ex. They are not using the exvangelical hashtag for that. What we're seeing with the exvangelical hashtag is that, first of all, it's very difficult to define what evangelical is. And that's kind of a word like deconstruction that's defined in a hundred different ways. So there's the Bevington's Quadrilateral that characterizes the evangelical movement under four pillars of personal conversion, emphasis on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, biblical authority, and evangelism. And yet, if you ask people in the deconstruction hashtag what is evangelical, those beliefs are in the background for sure, but what they primarily see is God, guns and Trump. It's what is perceived in their minds to be this unholy alliance between evangelicals and the political right. And so it's all kind of mashed together, along with things like spiritual abuse and purity culture and conservative politics. It's all kind of this ball that all gets kind of mixed together and then it all gets thrown out as exvangelical. And so in some cases they're conflating evangelical with the historic Christian gospel, and in other cases, they might actually be throwing out some cultural things that are Americanized that aren't necessarily a part of the gospel. And it can be kind of like a mix of both. But it's important like when Tim talked about the shift of authority, its' like the only thing that matters for the exvangelical and deconstruction is that they are leaving behind what they perceive to be toxic beliefs. And so as best as I can analyze are it's any belief outside of yourself that you would be asked to submit to, surrender to, kneel to that is not necessarily something that resonates with you inside.Jonathan: Interesting. So you're the ultimate authority, which goes to the deconstruction definition of Scripture being the authority.Alisa: I do think it boils down to that, yes. Jonathan: Do you find this is a uniquely American phenomenon? I don't even know if phenomenon is the right word to use there.Tim: That's a really good question. I think that there's a few reasons why we're seeing this in particular in North America. It's happening in Canada, too, not just the U.S. I think that we're seeing a culture that's dominated by a philosophy of relativism on the one hand and then on the other you have this kind of explosion of social media within the last decade or so. And I think bringing those two things together in particular—And then maybe a third thing, and that is the American church and how we have, I think, neglected the life of the Christian mind. We used to say the church teaches what we believe really well but not why we believe it. So us apologists, we're trying to train up the church in why we believe these things. But to be honest, when you look at the research now that's coming out in the last couple of years, people who identify as evangelical, I think it was in our book we say 42 or 43 percent of U.S., so Americans, who identify as evangelical do not believe that Jesus is god. They think He's just a good moral teacher. Hold on a second! So these people identify as evangelical but they're not Christian. I mean, this is crazy! So you have, on the one hand, Christians, people who are professing to be Christians because, hey, I was born in America or I was born in Canada. That's the default, right. It's like in your genetics or something. Yeah, so you have that on the one hand, so there's no real understanding or foundation for what real, orthodox Christianity is. Then you have this dominant culture, I mean, it's coming from every direction, this idea of relativism. It's literally the water that many of your young people especially are swimming in, and they don't even know they're wet. And then of course you have social media, this platform now, where I have access to, I mean, the world. I have access to memes and TikToks and these, for many, they think these are compelling arguments. I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting here at my desk and I get a message coming in. It's a meme or a TikTok video that someone sends me and says, “Hey, can you respond to this? I don't know what to say. I don't know how to respond.”And I watch the video or I read the meme and I think, Really? This is not a good argument. It's not even close. Usually, it's not even an argument. And so when you bring all those things together, I think that makes America susceptible to the deconstruction movement for sure.Alisa: there's also the Trump element in the American version of deconstruction. It's just such a huge part of that that is so uniquely American. But as Tim said, I think deconstruction is happening everywhere. I know progressive Christianity is happening. Even in the Middle East I've gotten emails of people wanting my book to be translated into Farsi because it's even coming into the Middle East. So where there is progressive Christianity, there is dn. But I suppose it's just taking on maybe a different type of flavor here in America.Jonathan: Well, and even the Trump effect has ripple effects around the world to where people in foreign nations see Trump and think, Oh, well, he's their definition of Christian. Let's talk about the prevalence. Because I think there are some who think this is just happening out in large cities or this is not affecting everyday people. There can be a disconnect to just how much influence this is having. And it can be people who are watching and consuming these things that aren't even talking about it with their family because they know how the family will react when there's genuine questions and doubt. So tell us a little bit about what you're seeing with the prevalence of both of these concepts entering into homes.Alisa: Well, I think we're in a different world now, so this is an interesting anecdotal piece to this. When I go out and speak I'll often ask an audience, “How many of you have heard the word deconstruction in the context of faith?” And the older the audience, the fewer the people have even heard of it. And yet, when I go speak to students it's 90 percent. But it blows my mind. Even at women's conferences where women … the ages are 20 to maybe 60, 70, you might have 20 percent raise their hand that they've even heard of the concept.And so what I mean by we're in a different world is decades ago you had to get a book deal. There was major exposure with ideas. And so I think that there are some of us who are still living in that world and don't realize the prevalence of some of these ideas on social media. For example, we have many posts documented in our book where it's somebody that nobody's ever heard of an probably never will know their name, but their video has millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes, and if you think about the reach of that versus somebody that you might have seen on TV decades ago or maybe in a Christian bookstore even or in the catalog that they would send out, that's a lot of people. But social media can reach so many people with a message where it's not even necessarily surrounding a particular personality.And so I think the prevalence of it is on social media, so someone's exposure to it is probably going to be directly related to what types of social media they have and how often they engaging with it. Tim: And the other element to this, the older folks who have exposure to it, is because they have a loved one, usually a younger loved one, who is going through it and now we're just, as we label it, this is what it is, deconstruction, they say—it clicks. Oh, that's what my nephew is going through, or my grandchild or my son or my daughter or whatever. So it does kind of filter up to that older generation. They're seeing the aftermath usually. It's like why is my grandson no longer following the Lord? Well, it turns out they went through a process called deconstruction. Jonathan: Well, and I imagine some of the reactions can be unhelpful, and that's why, again, I think it's important that books like yours are out there and podcasts and stuff that you guys are producing is out there, so that there's a heightened awareness but also a helpful response. Because we do have a response and a calling, but we need to make sure we're doing it in a right and biblical way.I wonder if we could come to the origins of this. I know Carl Lawson writes in the foreword in your book about technically the beginning is, when Demas, who fell in love with the world, abandoned Paul and the ministry and the faith. But I mean in this particular area, is it with social media? Was there a particular person or is it just postmodernism in general? Where do you find your origins to these movements?Tim: Well, it's true that we could trace this thing past Demas. We can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, always. But just more recently in the 1960s we see postmodern philosophers like Derrida in particular, who is the father of deconstruction. Now of course, his application of deconstruction was to textbook religion. He argued that objective meaning, objective truth, could not be known, and that there was no actual truth, so the reader could import just as much meaning as an author of a text. And what we traced in our research is we saw there is a connection here. In fact, we discovered a book by John Caputo, who is a scholar and actually follows Derrida and applies Derrida's philosophy not just to textbook religion in general, but in fact, to Christianity. And he wants to do this postmodern move even on the words of Jesus. And so he gives application in his book. What would Jesus think about, say, homosexuality today? Well, He would look around the world and see loving, monogamous relationships and He would be affirming. Even though Derrida says, yet, in the first century, no, Paul and Jesus, they had a certain view on this, but we're going to bring new meaning to the text. In fact, the way Derrida describes this is Derrida says the text actually never arrives at a meaning. In fact, he has this analogy of a postman delivering a letter, and it's like the letter never arrives at its destination, and in that sense, Christianity has not arrived. There is no set fundamental beliefs that you need to hold to—in fact, they are always changing, never arriving.So this is kind of the history, and of course there's lots of people who don't know who Derrida is, they don't know who John Caputo is, and yet, they are taking a page out of his playbook. They are thinking in terms of that kind of postmodern philosophy as they look out at religion. It's not what is actually true corresponds to reality; instead, it's there is something else going on. Oftentimes, it's personal preferences are the authority, or maybe they're looking at the culture and saying, “Yeah, look, the culture is more accepting of sexuality and so we ought to be too.”Jonathan: Yeah, just like in the days of Noah. Help us understand who are some of the primary voices behind this today? I know we talked about how when you're on social media it can be a lot of nameless, faceless people who just have an opinion and they want to create an argument or a non-argument that has an effect on people with their emotions. Are there any that are writing or have some influence as, you know, even by way of warning people, hey, be careful of so-and-so because it tends towards this trajectory?[24:42] Alisa: Well, I would say there's, in my mind, and Tim might have some others, but in my mind there's one figure in particular that is, in my view, the most influential, although he's not primarily promoting quote/unquote “deconstruction,” is Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr, his ideas, his universal Christ worldview, is—Interestingly, when I was researching the coaching and therapy sites, I found all the ones I could find online of people offering services to coach you through deconstruction or even offer you therapy through your deconstruction—and by the way, these therapy and coaching sites are not helping you to remain a Christian; they are not interested in where you land, they just want to help you along your subjective journey.But even the ones that aren't claiming to be Christians, there's always this recommendation—I looked at all the book recommendations, and there is a Richard Rohr book there every single time, even among those that don't claim to be Christians. And so what Rohr has done, I think, is, especially among people who want to retain the title Christian but might be more spiritual but not religious, or some sort of a New Age-y kind of Jesus is more of a mascot kind of thing, Rohr has really given them a worldview to put in place of what they've turned down. And he does talk about deconstruction in his book, Universal Christ, and he says it's like the process of order, disorder, and then reorder. Well, that sounds good at face value. You're taught a certain thing, and then something messes it up and as an adult you have to do some digging and some work and then you reorder. But that's not exactly what he's talking about. His order stage is what he calls “private salvation,” your private salvation project. In other words, Rohr doesn't believe in personal salvation, he believes in universal salvation, he's a universalist. So he's saying that's like the kindergarten version of faith, this kind of Christianity where you have personal faith and you have this God of wrath and judgment. All of that just needs to be disordered so that ultimately you can reorder according to his worldview.Now I bring up Rohr because he's so influential. I mean, he makes his way into so many of the deconstruction conversations. But beyond Rohr, it's tough because there can be platforms that swell up and get really big, and then I've seen them shut down after they have maybe 20,000, 30,000 followers, even up to hundreds of thousands of followers. I've seen several of these platforms just kind of get burned out and they shut down. So it's hard to say, but I would say Derek Webb, Caedmon's Call, is an important voice in there. You've got—Well, Jon Steingard was for a while when he ended up shutting down his YouTube, but he was the lead singer of Hawk Nelson. He was commenting for quite a while. Jo Luehmann is pretty influential. Who else, Tim?Tim: Well, there's—I put them in different categories.Alisa: The NakedPastor.Tim: The NakedPastor for sure. So there's guys who, and gals who have deconstructed and posted that they've deconstructed online. So that would be someone like a Rhett McLaughlin, who 3 million people watched his video four years ago. He's been keeping people updated every year; they do kind of an anniversary thing. That sparked so many people on their own deconstruction. Now what's interesting about Rhett is he didn't necessarily tell you how toTim: Yeah. And that was enough for some people to say, “Maybe I should do this too.” Now there's other platforms out there, and all they do is criticize Christianity, or they mock Christianity. Those are big on TikTok. I mean, there are massive platforms that have half a million followers and millions of views, okay, and I could go down and list some of those for you. But the point is they're not necessarily talking about deconstruction and the process, but they're just saying, “Hey, here's what you guys believe, but here's my mocking, here's my criticism.” Then there's this other stream, and this is the NakedPastor or Jo Luehmann and others who aren't just mocking Christianity or criticizing Christianity but they're trying to advocate for a certain kind of process, okay, and that's where you're going to get a little more detail on how this deconstruction thing works out. And so they've been, in fact, Jo Luehmann and the NakedPastor, David Hayward, and—Jonathan: Joshua Harris. Didn't he do a course through that?Tim: That's right. Joshua Harris, when he—again, on Instagram. That blew up. There were like 7,000 comments in response to him just posting, “I'm no longer a Christian.” And you could see the responses, and I'm telling you, there were many who said, “This post is what set me on my deconstruction journey.” So there's at least three different categories of influencers out there, and they're all playing into the same thing, deconstruction, but they all are coming at it from a different angle.Jonathan: Alisa, for those who are familiar with your story, how is this movement different from the path that you were on?Alisa: This is a great question because I've actually changed my mind on how I talk about this. So over ten years ago I had a faith crisis that was really agonizing. It was years long. I landed fairly quickly in going through some apologetics arguments, knowing that God existed, but just the doubts that would nag at me were just years of this agonizing research, reading thousands of pages of scholarship, just trying to figure out if what I believed was actually true. And it was propelled by a progressive pastor. I didn't know he was progressive at the time, but I was in a church where there was this class going on and it set my friends, a bunch of my friends, into deconstruction. And so when I wrote my first book about my journey, I actually called the process that I went through deconstruction because it was horrible, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It was agonizing and I had to kind of de-con-struct. If you just take the word at face value, and then build back from the beginning.But interestingly, when I would go online and I would talk about my deconstruction, deconstructionists would come on and say, “No, you didn't deconstruct.” At first, that was so confusing to me. I was like, “Well, were you there?” I mean, it was like this horrible, agonizing process.Jonathan: I'm the ultimate authority here.Alisa: Yeah, right, I know. And they said, “Well, you didn't deconstruct because you still hold to toxic theology. You still have toxic theological beliefs.” And that's when I realized, oh, okay, so this isn't just—even though I knew it wasn't a good thing, I knew it was a horrible thing because, again, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but it wasn't about truth. It's actually about leaving behind these beliefs that they think are toxic. And let's say you completely do hard work of years of studying and you decide that you are a sinner and that Jesus did die on the cross for your sins, that the Bible is God's Word and that what Jesus claimed about Himself is true and that He proved it by resurrecting from the dead, if you hold to those beliefs, along with the biblical sexual ethic, you have toxic theology and you've got to go back to the drawing board and start over.So that's when I realized, okay, there's more to this. And so I actually correct myself—Jonathan: There's a goal.Alisa: Yeah. I correct myself in the new book and say I don't actually use the language of deconstruction to describe what I went through because I was on a truth quest. I wanted to know what was true, whether I liked it or not, whether it resonated with me or not. In fact, what was interesting in the class I was in where all my friends ended up deconstructing, and I mean all that I know of, there might be two that I lost touch with that maybe didn't, but most of the people that I know of did. And everything in that class was all about what resonates with me. I mean, we would … they would talk about Bible verses and say, “Well, that just doesn't resonate with me,” and they would toss it aside. And I was like, “You can't just do that.”And so I didn't deconstruct, and so I corrected my language on that and really changed my mind about what I think it is. And I think what I'm hoping to set the example for others is people who are wanting to use the word because it was trendy—because I really had a thing about that. Why am I using the word? Why am I hanging onto the word? And I had to realize there's no reason for me to use that word. Because what I did was search for truth. I tested all things, held fast to what is good—that's biblical. I don't need a postmodern word to describe that. And so that would be my journey with this word and kind of my relationship with it is that I've changed my mind; I didn't deconstruct. It was—Jonathan: You re-entrenched.Alisa: Yeah, they just think I circled some wagons and found some people to agree with me. Which is so interesting to me, because they weren't there. And that's the thing. Pete Ens, I've seen the comment from him, “Oh, Alisa doesn't know … she doesn't understand deconstruction, she doesn't get it.”And I'm just like, “Were you there? You weren't there. You have no idea what I went through.” But it's like they're so quick to say, “You have to respect my lived experience,” but they are the first ones that will not respect your lived experience if you land at historic Christianity for sure.Jonathan: That makes sense. You guys have spent hours on places like TikTok researching what leads people to deconstruct and what they all have in common. What are the common threads that you've noticed through that?Tim: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, some of the factors that we've noticed that kind of launch people into a deconstruction are things like doubts, unanswered questions. Virtually all these stories have some instance of suffering or pain, and we've all been through that. There's church hurt, there's spiritual abuse. Now we've got to be careful about that a little bit, because sometimes it's a real abuse that happens, of course, we would all want to say that is horrible and we stand against that. That is not of God. And so when a pastor engaged in that kind of thing, he needs to be held accountable for it.But then on the other hand there is what we might call perceived abuse or perceived harm. And this is where things like teaching the doctrine of hell. In our research, we found that that's called, you know, teaching your kids, it's child abuse. If you say that Jesus died for your sins, that's considered toxic and abusive to tell someone that, yet that's the gospel message. So we want to make sure that we distinguish between those things.Of course, we just mentioned earlier about politics and Trump and all that stuff. So there's these different elements that you'll see peppered within these stories. Now we want to be quick to say that not all deconstruction stories are alike. In fact, they are often very unique, and that's because every single person is unique. So if you've heard one deconstruction story, then you've only heard one, you haven't heard them all. But there are these common threads.One question that we asked when we were doing our research is why is it that two people can grow up in the same house, they can go to the same church, the same youth group, they have the same parents, they experience some of the same trauma, suffering, whatever, and yet one will deconstruct and the other maybe becomes an even more faithful believer. What's going on there?And what we found is it comes down to—at least one element—a faith foundation. What is it, what is your faith foundation? And of course, this is going to be different for different people, and what we need to be asking, we're challenging the church to ask, is what does it mean to be a Christian? Oftentimes, you know—and this is a question I was asked when I was in university by my friends who were not believers, “Tim, why are you a Christian?” And I honestly shot back, “Because my parents are Christians.” That was my first response. I knew that ain't right. That was embarrassing. I'd grown up in the church. I'd done all the church stuff, and yet I did not have a strong Christian foundation and a strong Christian faith. And so I, at that point, was very susceptible to this kind of deconstruction, right, because I could—if TikTok was big at that time, I could have watched a video and, “Okay, I'm outta here. This has been refuted.”So I think that all those things that I mentioned earlier can make you a good candidate for deconstruction, but they don't have to lead you down the path of deconstruction. This is why it's really, really important that the church needs to be helping to develop and disciple Christians so they have a strong foundation so when that crisis hits, they are able to stand firm in their faith. So let me ask this question. There may be a simple answer. Is the faulty foundations that people are building on essentially, I mean, is the answer anything but Christ? Is it in the institution of the church or in the leadership in the church or your favorite Christian singer? Is it … do you find those the main threads that came back?Alisa: That's an interesting question. I think, you know, when I think about foundation … Because I was trying to think through this question even within my own context. So one of my sisters was not a Christian until she was an adult, and she would say that openly; that's part of her testimony. She grew up in church. We grew up in the same home, we had the same discipleship, the same youth pastors, pretty much the same experiences growing up, same environment, and yet our foundation was different because I was a devoted Christian as far back as I can remember. I mean, I don't even remember a time where I didn't absolutely know that the Bible was God's Word and Jesus was who He said He was. And yet, for my sister, she grew up in the same environment but had a totally different foundation. she did all the things, she cooperated with it, but She never personally trusted in Christ.Jonathan: Going through the motions, yeah, okay.Alisa: Yeah. And she may not have even realized that. You might have asked her at 12 years old, “Are you a Christian,” she might have said, “Well, yeah,” but she didn't know that she wasn't until she actually got saved as an adult. And so I think the foundation is more of a personal thing. The way I see it is the level of understanding you  might have had. We have a lot of this sort of seeker-sensitive model that's over the past few decades has gotten really big. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a large church or try to be sensitive to people who are seeking, of course. But some of those seeker-sensitive and megachurch models really watered-down the gospel, really sacrificed discipleship for numbers. And I think that that has resulted in a lot of people growing up in churches that maybe—And I'm not … We don't speculate on this question in the book, were they really saved, were they not because we don't know the end of their story either, but I do think even right now we have a lot of people in our churches who maybe may not be Christians because they may not be getting the gospel, they're not getting Bible teaching. And they might like the community and even like and believe certain things about it, but everybody's foundation is maybe going to be a little bit different. That's kind of how I see it.Jonathan: Well, I mean, not to steer us theologically, but I mean it has to be the work of the Spirit in the life of a person, and that's all in the sovereign timing of the Lord. I wonder if sometimes in this American evangelical mindset from an older-generation perspective we have this understanding that my children should be Christians and they should be following the ways that I direct. And then I should start seeing spiritual fruit in their life. Like, well, I don't know. I mean, is there something wrong with that happening at a later point? Just thinking from a parental, a parent's perspective. Maybe I've gone into the weeds there a little bit.Alisa: Like Tim said, each deconstruction story is unique. I would say it like this. Every deconstruction story is unique and yet they're kind of all the same, too, in certain points. I know we're getting in the weeds a little bit, but as a parent, I wouldn't want to push my kid to say they believe something they don't really believe. I'd want them to come to that on their own. And that might come later, certainly, yeah.Jonathan: And there's a level of you want your child to be honest with you, and I think sometimes we can put a false expectation on your child to be going to be at a certain place when they're just not ready for that yet. And so what they're actually deconstructing is deconstructing whatever that false view—again, as you said, there's different stories of deconstruction. But ultimately, if you deconstruct and never return back, to your point, there was never faith to begin with. You experienced the benefits of a covenant community or whatever it is. As Hebrews says, you were tasting but you weren't of that, you know … not all Israel is Israel.Do you think it's potentially because parents are unwilling to engage in the hard questions of the faith? Or do you think perhaps there is always just people who are going to rebel against Christ? Is it all of the above? In your research, I don't know if you're working with people who have gone through it and then interviewing them. Are you tracing things back to a particular point? I think we all want to say, “Where does the blame lie?” Are you finding that?Tim: I think it's all of the above. A lot of these stories have unanswered questions. In fact, Alisa did a debate on Unbelievable with Lisa Gunger, and she makes this really tragic statement where she said, “Questioning was equivalent to sinning in our church. If you questioned the pastor, you questioned his teaching, whatever, you were in essence sinning.”So confessing to your questions is confessing your sins. And that mentality, I mean, we wrote a whole chapter called “Questions,” In that chapter, what we're trying to do is a little bit of a wake-up call. We're trying to rattle the church a little bit and say, “Hey, we can do better. We ought to be the place where people feel safe to ask their questions and express their doubts.” And I hope that everyone listening to this hears that. Tim and Alisa are not against questions—in fact, we're apologists. We travel around and we're doing our best to answer questions, so we're not against that, and we want the church to be a safe place.And I mean we give an example of Tim Keller. At the end of his sermons, his services, he would do like a 40-, 45-minute Q&A time where he would just stick around and, okay, come on up. And in New York City, where you have like diversity of people, diversity of views coming in, you're going to have skeptics, you're going to have atheists, you're going to have whatever coming in, asking their hard questions. And when you think about it, the way we have our churches structured, at least most of them, there isn't really a Q&A time. That would be like a very special thing. Maybe every few months the pastor will take questions or something. Jonathan: A special treat. Yeah, yeah.Tim: That's right. But for the most part, that's not there, and that can give a lot of people the impression that questions aren't allowed here. You just listen to what's spoken, do what you're told, and that's the end of it. So I think that's part of it. But you also mentioned, yeah, maybe there's a rebellious heart, too. You can't read the Bible very far without seeing someone who has a rebellious heart. So we—Tim: That's right. Just a couple of pages in. And so you end up seeing that this is a realistic element that we need to be talking about, too, and that's why we devoted an entire chapter to the deconstructor, because there are things about the deconstructor that are important to be aware of from a biblical anthropology perspective. And so there certainly are people who are seeking answers, and we want to be there to provide answers. But then there's also these questions out there that are seeking exits. And you see lots of those. You see them in Scripture and we see—When you've got Richard Dawkins saying, “Well, who made God?” Richard Dawkins should know better, you know. When my four-year-old asks that question, okay, fair enough. But when you have an academic from Oxford asking that question as if it's legitimate of the Christian God, something else is going on.Jonathan: I remember Keller teaching on Job, and he says Job is filled with questions, right, but the issue was that he never left God. He didn't say, “I have questions and now I'm going to go over here and ask them.: But he kept asking the questions of the Lord in his particular situation. And he was saying that questioning can be a good thing because it's, as we talked earlier, all truth is Christ's truth, so there's nothing to be afraid of. You're not going to get an answer where it should cause difficulty. But rather, you're sticking close to the source and you're going to get your answers within reason. But rather than going—And it's interesting, because that's what these TikToks and all these things are creating is new avenues for you to go and ask questions and find a story that resonates with you, right, that's the big terminology that we were using earlier. So that resonates with your story and how you feel, and then where did they land? How do we invite this sort of cultivating an openness for asking of questions? Is it let's have a Q&A session at the end of church? Is it, you know, we need to start training our parents to have them understand that your kids asking questions is a good thing because they're coming to you versus no, everything is fine and I'm going to go to YouTube and find the answer because I think you're going to be mad at me or whatever it is. Help us think through that from a church perspective. Alisa: Well, I think starting with the parents is a great place to start because if we can train parents to be the first person to introduce some of these difficult topics to their kids, we know statistically the first person to introduce the topic will be viewed as an expert in the eyes of the child. So when we as parents are the first people to talk to our kids about gender and sexuality and all of these different things—and promoting an environment where we're not weird about it, we're not acting awkward about it, then we want to be the Google. I want to be Google for my kids. And that means I'm going to be really honest when they ask their questions and sometimes give more information than they wanted.My daughter, she jokes with me like “I know I'll get a straight answer from you with whatever I ask.” And so maybe even training parents to ask your kids questions like “Hey, what's your biggest question about God?”And parents don't need to be afraid of what their kids say, because it's perfectly fine to say, “Wow, I've never really thought about that. Let's think that through together,” and then go do some research and continue to engage with your kid about it. But I think in the home, if we can start there, that's a great place. And then the church can help come around parents with even youth groups doing Q&As and pastors doing Q&As. I think that's a huge way to promote that environment from the home, all the way through the church culture.Jonathan: Okay, let's do a little sort of engaging with others segment here. What would you say to those who are seeing their loved ones go through deconstruction or exvangelical. What would you say to them? Buy our book.Tim: Yeah, that. And I mean the first thing that I would say is stay calm. It can be not just earthshattering for the person going through deconstruction, but the loved ones of those deconstructors it's often earthshattering. We talk about this in the book, actually. To find out that my kids who I've raised in the church come to me and say, “Dad, I don't believe any of this stuff anymore, I'm out,” that would be crushing.And I would want to remind myself: stay calm. I've heard so many stories, and they're actually horror stories, where a child comes to a parent and says, “I'm deconstructing” and the parent just loses it. “How could you do that?” And they overreact, and of course that's not going to help. That's the first thing.I would want my kids right away to know that they are loved, period. That this doesn't change my love for them. It's not “I love you, but let me fix your theology.” It's “I love you, period. You're still my daughter. I'm still your dad. That's not going to change.”And then another thing just to add is say thank you. It must have taken a lot for that individual, if they come to you and share that they've deconstructed, it must have been a big deal to do that. So I would say, “Thanks for sharing that with me and me being the person that can be there for you.” So those are introductory things. Obviously, relationship is going to be so important. It's not necessarily that you're going to be able to maintain the relationship. We've heard stories of people getting no-contact letters from their loved one saying, “Your theology is toxic. I don't want anything to do with you and so we're done. Here's my no-contact letter.”But if they're willing to stay in your life, then we want to do whatever is possible to  maintain that relationship without compromising truth. Truth is absolutely necessary. But you want to be in that relationship as long as possible, because that's where you're going to be able to have probably the best impact.Its' interesting you brought up Job earlier. And Job's comforters started on the right track. They were there and they sat with Job—Jonathan: Silent.Tim: Silently for seven days. And then it was when they started to open their mouths they got themselves into trouble, and I think we can learn something from that. So we want to hear, “Hey, tell me your story.”One of the first questions I would want to know is, “What do you mean by deconstruction?” If they're using that word, I want to know if they just mean, “Hey, I'm asking some questions. Hey, I don't know if I believe in this view of creation, baptism, and maybe I'm changing.”Okay, that's different than what we're seeing online, okay, this idea of a postmodern process. So I want to nail down, okay, what are you going through and what kind of process or methodology are you using to go through it? I want to be able to identify those things.And of course, in the book we talk about this idea of triage. If you have a gunshot wound to the head but a broken finger, they're treating the gunshot wound to the head, right, the thing that's more serious. And in a similar way, once you understand where this person's coming from, you've heard their story, you're going to be able to do some triage. Okay, what's the most important thing in this moment? Is it that I answer all these questions that I'm having? Is it that they just need me to be with them because they are going through something? And I think that's important because sometimes we miss the mark. Especially as apologists, oh, let me answer that question. Let's go for coffee. I'm going to fix your theology and then we'll be back on track.Jonathan: We're going to fix the problem, yeah.Tim: That's likely not going to happen. And then finally, I would just say continue to pray. We cannot underestimate the power of prayer. If someone is going through deconstruction, what they need is God. They need the Holy Spirit. And so let's petition God on their behalf. Let's pray that God does whatever is necessary to draw that person back to Himself.Jonathan: All right, now thinking for the person who is considering deconstructing their faith. And again, that could be a myriad of different positions along that path, but what are the things you would want them to know?Alisa: Well, so here's what I would say. If someone is considering deconstruction as if it's like an option, “Oh, maybe I'll deconstruct my faith,” and there's no crisis that's actually throwing you in deconstruction, I would say you don't need to do that. There's no biblical command to get saved, get baptized, and then deconstruct your faith. You don't need to do that. If there are some incorrect theological views that you—maybe you grew up in a very legalistic stream of Christianity. Maybe you grew up in the Mormon church. Maybe you grew up as  Jehovah's Witness and you need to go to Scripture, make Scripture your authority, and then get rid of beliefs that were taught to you that are not biblical. I want you to know that that is a biblical process and that is what you should do.Jonathan: This is what we call disentangling, right, that we were talking about.Alisa: Yes. In our book, we would call it reformation. But yeah, Jinger Duggar calls it disentangling. I don't care what you call it. I would just really encourage you to not use the word deconstruction, because deconstruction is a very specific thing that isn't about getting your theological beliefs corrected according to the Bible, and so we want to be reforming our faith according to Scripture. And so if you need to disentangle, as Jinger would say, or reform beliefs that were unbiblical, please do that. And that can be a very long process. It can be a difficult process. But if someone is listening who's maybe propelled into deconstruction through some church abuse or whatever it might be, my encouragement would sort  of be the same. It's actually good for you to get rid of beliefs that led to abuse, that Jesus stands against abuse as well. But I would just encourage you not to get sucked into this sort of deconstruction movement, because it's not based on absolute truth. It's not based on Scripture. And it's not going to lead you to any sort of healing and wholeness spiritually. And so whether you're just considering it intellectually or you're just interested, I would resist it. And that's … There's going to be well-meaning evangelical leaders that will tell you you can deconstruct according to the bible, but I don't think you can. And so let's keep our language and the way we think about this biblical rather than bringing in a postmodern concept that just clouds the … muddies the water and causes confusion.Jonathan: All right, this is good because this goes to the next level. What do you say to those who believe that Christianity is toxic or patriarchal? What's your word to them? And then the follow-up to that would be for believers. When do we engage and when do we not engage with people who are kind of promoting that sort of ideology?Tim: I would want to ask some questions, like what do they mean by toxic, what do they do they mean by patriarchal, to nail down those definitions. Are they appealing to something objective or are they appealing to something subjective based on their own personal preferences? I think it's really important that we start with what's true before we can look at whether or not something is toxic, or harmful, or whatever. In the book, we give the example of you stumble upon someone who's kind of beating on someone's chest, and in that moment it may look like they're being abused, but you come to find out that actually they've had a heart attack, and that person is not beating on their chest, they're doing chest compressions, doing CPR. That totally changes how you see that action, right? It goes from being, hey, that's harmful and toxic to, wait, this is lifesaving, this is lifegiving. So I think that's really important, when I see a deconstructionist talk about how hell is causing child abuse, I want to know, first of all, if there is such a place as hell. For them, it's not even on the table; it's not even the question, right, because it's a totally different philosophy, a totally different worldview. I want to look at is this true?I give the example of I told my kids not to jam a knife into the wall socket. Well, why not? Because there's electricity in there and it could electrocute you and kill you. So any good parent warns their kids about that. Or touching the hot stove, these kinds of things. Is it harmful for me to tell them not to do that? Everyone agrees, no, that's not harmful; it's not toxic. Now, it would be toxic if there was no such thing as electricity. If I'm just playing these games where I'm trying to torment my kids so they're scared to do whatever, to actually make them terrified of the stove or something. No. Okay, the reason that they need to be careful around this hot stove or not stuck, stick stuff in the wall outlet is because there are dangers. And if hell really is this kind of danger, then we ought to appropriately talk about this issue. Look, I'm not talking to my three-year-old about eternal conscious torment. You know what I'm saying? Obviously, there is some appropriate when the time is right. Sexuality, we appropriately talk with those … about those issues with our kids. But we do talk about those things, and that's because they're true, and that's were we start.Jonathan: That sort of answers a little bit of the next question, which is that you both dedicated the book to your children. And we're, I think, we've kind of addressed it in terms of being available. But in light of everything that you know and all that is going on with deconstruction and the questions and the struggles of the next generation, how are you taking this and applying this as you raise your children?Alisa: Well, I know that this research has definitely affected how I parent. In fact, I went through a phase in the early stages of the research where I would hear myself saying things, and I was like, “That's going to end up in their deconstruction struggle.” And I found myself almost becoming way too passive for it was probably just a couple of months when the research was so intense, and it was new. And it was like, oh my gosh, all these things i'm saying to my children is what people say they think is toxic and that's what they're deconstructing from.And then I swung back around and I'm like, no, it's my job as a parent to teach my kids what's true about reality. Just because maybe culture things that 2 + 2 = 5 now doesn't mean that I need to cower and say, “Well, you know, I'm not going to be too legalistic about 2 + 2 + 4.” No. 2 + 2 = 4. You can believe what you want, but this is what's true. And so I actually, you know, what I've started to do is tell my kids “Look, it's my job as your mom to teach you what's true about reality. And what you believe about God and what you believe about morality is in the same category of science, math, logic. These are facts about reality. It's my job to teach you. Now, you are the person who chooses to believe it or not.”And so what I've tried to do is really engage my kids in conversations, but knowing also that statistically they might deconstruct one day. I have to leave a lot of that to the Holy Spirit, and also to try to model to my children what a real believer looks like. I think that's a huge, a huge element in parenting is letting our kids see us repent to them if we sin against them, in front of them. Reading our Bibles on a regular basis together, praying together as a family. Not just being Sunday Christians. Here in the South it's real easy to just be that Sunday Christian and then—Jonathan: Haunted by the ghost of Christ.Alisa: That's right. And then you just live like He doesn't exist the rest of the week. And that's the thing about the Bible Belt. Certainly, people aren't acting  … like doing pagan sacrifices during the week. They are pretty much good people. But it's just not relevant to their lives until Sunday comes around. And just being different from that in front of our kids is something I've really tried to engage. And just engaging their questions without pushing them, I think, is a huge thing. Like you mentioned earlier, is letting them have their own story and their own journey. And even as my sons wrestled with the problem of evil for about two years really intensely, I really didn't want to push him. And I just validated that that's a good question, that's an honest question to ask, and let's talk to the Lord about it, let's think through some things. But trying not to push him to just settle really quickly so that he can work this out for himself, with discipleship and the guidance of parents. But that's one of the ways it's really affected my parenting.Tim: That's so good. Yes and amen to all of that. Jonathan: Okay, I second that. All right, give us some hope. This is your part three. Part three. This can all sound pretty scary and off-putting and you need to block it out.Tim: It really really does seem hopeless, especially if you spend any time kind of typing in hashtag deconstruction or hashtag exvangelical. I mean, I would go into my office here and start working and writing and I'd come out and I'd just be like … my mood has changed.Jonathan: Spiritual warfare, for sure.Tim: My wife knew it, oh yeah, my wife saw it and my kids could see it. It was really discouraging. And so I feel for those parents who have that loved one who's going through this, and many do, so we wanted to make sure we end the book on a hopeful note. And one of the things that we were thinking about—in fact, I think it started with a phone call. I called Alisa, and I remember I was sitting at my dining-room table and I had a sermon that I was going to give on deconstruction. And I'm like, Alisa, I need to end this thing with something hopeful because it is so … And I had, actually, a parent reach out to me before I gave the sermon, saying, “I really hope that you're going to give us some hope.” Because they have a child themselves, a young adult, who's deconstructing. I'm thinking, okay, what is it Alisa? Help me out here.And we just started talking back and forth and so I don't know how this came up, but eventually we started thinking about Easter weekend, right, we're coming up to it. Of course, you think about what was going on Friday night. It's like Peter's there; he's seen his Savior, his Messiah being crucified, and his world is turned upside down. We could just imagine what that was like to go through this traumatic experience. And then, of course, it jumps to Sunday and Sunday brings with it resurrected hope, right? And you have the angel shows up, tells the women, you know, go and tell His disciples AND Peter. Like Peter really needs to hear this. Friday night, he denied the Lord three times. It was a bad night for Peter. But he's going to receive this resurrection hope on Sunday.Well, we actually titled the last chapter “Saturday” because we think that a lot of people are living in what could be described as a Saturday. Now again, we're not told much about that particular Easter Saturday, so we can only speculate, but really, I mean, what kind of questions were the disciples, in particular, Peter, asking? Were they starting to doubt some of the things that they had been taught, maybe like trying to explain away some of the miracles they had seen? It wasn't supposed to happen this way, was it? And so there's self-doubt, there's all this trauma that they've experienced. Now of course, Sunday was just around the corner. We think that, look, if that hope can come for Peter, then it can come for you and your loved one, too, right? We don't know what that Saturday looks like. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be just one 24-hour day. It could be months down the road; it could be years down the road; but we think this is a message. Because if it can happen for Peter, it can happen for your loved one. And I think that can move us from a state of “This is completely hopeless, what good can come from this? How can this be undone,” to a state where, no, we can be hopeful. Jesus rose from the grave after being dead. And when that happened, Peter's faith is restored. “Do you love me?” He says, “Yeah, I love you.” Three times, kind of like paralleling the three denials.Jonathan: Exactly.Tim: And then the Church is built on this confession. So I mean that brings me hope, and hopefully it brings hope to others who are going through this.Jonathan: Just one final question. Have you seen anyone who's been restored out of this?Alisa: You know what? I have heard a few stories, but these are people that have platforms. So I have several people that are part of my Facebook community who have said they deconstructed into progressive Christianity but have been brought back. I have had a couple of people on my personal podcast who had deconstructed. One is a guy name Dave Stovall. We actually tell his story in the book. He was in the band Audio Adrenaline, and he deconstructed into progressive Christianity and then a local pastor here in town discipled him back to the historic Christian faith and had all these difficult conversations with him and engaged him in conversation. So I think we are seeing some. We're not seeing a lot yet, but I think a lot of the stories maybe are just more private, where people aren't necessarily shouting it on social media. But yeah, the Lord's at work, absolutely.Jonathan: That's good.Tim: Yeah, I can echo that, too. We've been … A I travel around teaching and speaking, I'll have people come up to me and usually you get a lot of people saying, “Thanks for hits information. I had no idea this was going on.” But this one guy, he said, “I went through deconstruction.” And he said, “It was when you put up your definition of deconstruction that you had me because that”—Alisa: Wow!Tim: I thought he was going to push back and be like, “But that's not how you define it. Instead, he said, “You had me as soon as you put up your definition.” Why? “Because,” he said, “that exactly described the process that I was going through.” And yet, here he was on that Sunday morning at church kind of completely kind of turning a corner and willing to say, “No, I'm willing to follow the truth wherever it leads.”And that led him to affirming that the Bible is God's Word, and now he's trying to align his beliefs. And of course, that's a journey we're all on. I have false beliefs right now; I just don't know which ones are false, right? I'm always trying to correct my mistaken beliefs and make them align with Scripture. And praise the Lord, that was the journey he was on.Jonathan: Oh, amen. Well, the book is The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It's Destructive and How To Respond. Alisa Childers, Tim Barnett, thank you, guys, so much for being on Candid Conversations. I've really enjoyed our talk today.Alisa: Me, too. Thanks so much.Tim: Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thanks for having us.Jonathan: God bless.

As author of Live Your Truth and Other Lies, Alisa Childers talks with us about the popularity of the Progressive movement and the biblical response to it. 

In the minds of many rock fans, Duff McKagan will forever be known first and foremost as the bassist for Guns N' Roses. The band's white-hot reign in the late '80s through the early '90s is the stuff of hedonistic, hard rock legend. And for anyone interested in reading a detailed account of that wild ride, check out Duff's memoir, “It's So Easy and Other Lies.” After turning 30, Duff got sober, eventually left GNR, and then went on to play stints in Alice In Chains and Jane's Addiction—and he helped form the supergroup, Velvet Revolver. In 2016, he rejoined Guns N' Roses following their induction into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Outside of his contributions to big name rock bands, Duff has also been releasing solo material since the early '90s. His latest album, Lighthouse, signals a new musical direction for Duff—one that focuses on reflective, personal lyrics and stripped-down rootsy-rock. On today's episode Leah Rose talks to Duff McKagan about his decision to leave the heroin-infested punk rock scene in his hometown of Seattle for LA. He also shares stories about Axl Rose and Slash while recording Appetite For Destruction. And he reminisces about the time his musical idol Prince was trying to get Duff to reveal the real reason why Guns N' Roses broke up. You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Duff McKagan songs HERE.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How many times have we heard our pop culture say, “You're perfect just as you are” or “God just wants you to be happy”? This week Mary Lowman and Alisa Childers help us navigate false ideas and Alisa shares from her book Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Join us as we discover how to stand against false beliefs as followers of Christ.

Our current society has a big worldview problem.Today for Wildcard Wednesday, We Talk About WorldviewToday, we talk about John Mark Comer's book Live No Lies, and two ideas that he really helped me clarify:What was the biggest idealogical mindset shift in Western civilization in the past 200 years?What cultural credo did we pick up from Shakespeare, and why is it so ironic?Today's Mind Change Monday episode gets into the philosophical underpinnings of modern Western thought, and two lies of the devil that have shaped so many people's thoughts on happiness:Live your truthWhat makes you unhappy is anyone telling you what to do or not to doImprove your gut health, immune system, and protect your brain with Pique!Books mentioned:Live No Lies by John Mark ComerFaithfully Different by Natasha CrainLive Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa ChildersThe Daniel Dilemma by Chris HodgesMusic by Tommy Walker(Music shared on The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is authorized under BMI license #61063253 and ASCAP license #400010513 )(We are on a 2-week sabbatical to prepare for Season 10. This episode will help you get ready!)Leave a voicemail with your question or comment!You can become a paid partner of the podcast and get special bonus episodes and lots more content by clicking here. Support and boost your immune system with Armra! Use DRLEEWARREN code at checkout for a discount!Improve your gut health, immune system, and protect your brain with Pique!We have a YouTube Channel! Click here to subscribe.PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to the show wherever you listen!Click here to access the Hope Is the First Dose playlist of hopeful, healing songs!Be sure to check out my new book, Hope Is the First Dose!Here's a free 5-day Bible study on YouVersion/BibleApp based on my new book!Sign up for my weekly Self-Brain Surgery Newsletter here! (00:02) - Introduction to the importance of worldview and its impact on life (03:31) - The danger of allowing a secular worldview to influence thinking (07:35) - The Power of Changing Your Mind and Finding Hope (15:34) - Redefining Happiness: Jesus' Definition vs. the World's Definition (18:49) - The Shift from Authority to Authenticity: Influence of Freud (25:20) - Freud's Influence on Modern Culture (28:09) - Pursuing Desires Doesn't Lead to Happiness (36:39) - Introducing "Hope is the First Dose" book

Show notes: Our most downloaded episode ever was about books that we think need more love. So, in today's episode we figured we'd share some more books that are underrated and deserve all the praise and attention. Plus, these are backlist titles, so they should be easier to find at the library or wherever you get your books. Happy reading!    Click here to join us on Patreon for exclusive bonus bookish goodies! Get our monthly overflow and new books episodes, our private Facebook group, and more. Plus, supporting us in this way just shows that you love what we do!   Find the time stamped show notes below with links to all of the fun things we mentioned.   Something Bookish: [03:59] S: Book FOMO is real. But also, don't buy into it. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros [05:30] M: The next pick for my classics book club is: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.    Underrated Backlist Books We Hope More People Read: [07:37] M: Ghost 19 by Simone St. James  [08:40] S: When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister [09:54] M: We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins [11:11] S: Truth and Other Lies by Maggie Smith [12:29] M: No One Crosses the Wolf by Lisa Nikolidakis [13:59] S: Most Likely by Sarah Watson [15:17] M: A Frenzy of Sparks by Kristin Fields [16:38] S: Man O'War by Cory McCarthy [18:13] M: Winders by Ryan O'Nan [19:46] S: The Heart of the Deal by Lindsay MacMillan   Honorable Mentions: [21:38] M: The Boys in the Cave by Matt Gutman Wild Words by Nicole Gulotta No Ordinary Time by Susan A. Mulder The Boat Rocker by Ha Jin I Will Find You by Joanna Connors   [23:21] S: The Leftovers by Cassandra Parkin The Bennet Women by Eden Appiah-Kubi The Boys by Katie Hafner Stay Gold by Tobly McSmith Shoulder Season by Christina Clancy   Also Mentioned: Episode 94, Books We Think Deserve a Second Life Want our show notes delivered right to your inbox? Join our RTL Substack so that you'll get a link for every single book we mention with no extra work. It's free! Follow RTL on Instagram: @readingthroughlifepod Follow Sarah on Instagram: @sarahhartleyco  Follow Mia on Instagram: @fastlifeinslowlane   * The books noted above contain affiliate links. This means that we may get a small kickback if you purchase through our links, at no additional cost to you.

Welcome to the Circle of the World Podcast! Join George, Harrison, and Jeffrey as we continue our coverage of Joe Abercrombie's First Law series! In this special episode we will be featuring XLIRV aka Trey who is a moderator on the House of The Meme Maker subreddit. He also wrote a book, it is Crossroads Awakening by T. Z. Witherite. And we announce the winner of our giveaway of The Great Change & Other Lies on this episode! Just remember, each of one you is a hero around these parts!Meme of the week:https://www.reddit.com/r/HouseOfTheMemeMaker/comments/18fngjl/like_they_say_the_snail_is_always_right/Music Credit: Maszy Music

Humorist Dallas McLaughlin joins the Jeffs in the studio to discuss his new album "I Didn't Start the Fire and Other Lies". Dallas shares great stories about iconic shows at Sea World along with some great local beers. Stay to the end for a great Beer or Not a Beer!

Our current society has a big worldview problem.Today for Wildcard Wednesday, We Talk About WorldviewToday, we talk about John Mark Comer's book Live No Lies, and two ideas that he really helped me clarify: What was the biggest idealogical mindset shift in Western civilization in the past 200 years? What cultural credo did we pick up from Shakespeare, and why is it so ironic? Today's Mind Change Monday episode gets into the philosophical underpinnings of modern Western thought, and two lies of the devil that have shaped so many people's thoughts on happiness: Live your truth What makes you unhappy is anyone telling you what to do or not to do Improve your gut health, immune system, and protect your brain with Pique!Books mentioned:Live No Lies by John Mark ComerFaithfully Different by Natasha CrainLive Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa ChildersThe Daniel Dilemma by Chris HodgesMusic by Tommy Walker(Music shared on The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is authorized under BMI license #61063253 and ASCAP license #400010513 )PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to the show wherever you listen!Click here to access the Hope Is the First Dose playlist of hopeful, healing songs!Be sure to check out my new book, Hope Is the First Dose!Here's a free 5-day Bible study on YouVersion/BibleApp based on my new book!Sign up for my weekly Self-Brain Surgery Newsletter here! (00:08) - Going back in time to March of this year (03:01) - The importance of stewarding your worldview diligently (08:03) - Commitment to Changing Mind and Maximizing Potential (17:06) - The Definition of True Happiness according to Jesus (19:11) - The Shift from a Culture of Authority to Authenticity (26:30) - The Deception of "To Thine Own Self Be True" (28:47) - Pursuit of Desire Does Not Lead to Happiness (30:51) - Be True to Someone Greater Than Yourself (37:07) - Introduction: Book and Podcast Sponsorship

Did you have formal logic in school? I didn't. As Kathy Gibbens was teaching her kids logic, she learned the importance of thinking clearly and logically herself. She recognized how helpful it is to have categories that bring order to confusing slogans and conversations. Amid the ramped-up rhetoric of 2020, Kathy launched a podcast to help train those of us who have never formally learned logic, so that we can learn not what to think but how to think. She joins me today to tell us her story and to walk us through a few of the common fallacies that people make when forming and defending their views.      Kathy's Website Filter It Through a Brain Cell  Classical Conversations homeschooling  The Fallacy Detective by Nathaniel Bluedorn, Hans Bluedorn   Heidi St. John's Off the Bench Podcast  The Watchmaker's Daughter: The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom by Larry Loftis  The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom  Corrie Ten Boom: The Watchmaker's Daughter, Trail Blazers Series by Jean Watson    Every day, social media feeds us messages like “follow your heart,” and “live your truth.” If we let these lies shape our beliefs, we ultimately end up exhausted and discouraged. Our next Lighthouse Voices event will address these appealing lies and help us respond to them with Christian wisdom. We'll be joined by Alisa Childers, author of Live Your Truth and Other Lies. She'll provide insight on how Christians can address faulty cultural slogans with wisdom, truth, and love. This free event will take place on Tuesday, November 7 at 7pm Mountain Time, and will be offered both online via livestream and in-person at Focus on the Family headquarters. Spaces are limited, so claim your spot today at colsoncenter.org/lighthousevoices.  Registration for our 2024 Colson Center National Conference – Courageous Faith – is now open! From May 30 – June 2, we'll gather in Arlington, Texas at the brand-new Loews Hotel & Resort. We at the Colson Center believe every Christian can live like one. But we also know that, when the world around us is changing rapidly, it's hard to know how to live as a Christian in this time and place. The Colson Center National Conference is a gathering of people who want to face today's unique challenges with informed and courageous faith. This year's gifted speakers include Sean McDowell, Neil Shenvi, Kathy Koch and more. They will help us tackle the complex worldview challenges of today with biblical insight and practical application. To register, go to colsonconference.org today.  The Strong Women Podcast is a product of the Colson Center which equips Christians to live out their faith with clarity, confidence, and courage in this cultural moment. Through commentaries, podcasts, videos, and more, we help Christians better understand what's happening in the world, and champion what is true and good wherever God has called them.  Learn more about the Colson Center here: https://www.colsoncenter.org/   Visit our website and sign up for our email list so that you can stay up to date on what we are doing here and also receive our monthly book list: https://www.colsoncenter.org/strong-women   Join Strong Women on Social Media:   https://www.facebook.com/StrongWomenCC  https://www.facebook.com/groups/strongwomencommunitycc/  https://www.instagram.com/strongwomencc/ 

A year ago, The Economist urged readers not to bring their “whole selves” to work. While some corporate gurus suggest that we make work feel more like home, the authors beg to differ.    Your professional self displays commitment to the job and eats lunch at a desk. Your whole self is planning the next holiday and binges ice cream on the sofa. Your professional self makes presentations to the board and says things like: “Let's get the analytics team to kick the t[i]res on this.” Your whole self cannot operate a toaster and says things like: “Has anyone seen my socks?” Pretending to be someone you are not is not a problem; it's essential.  That description speaks to what lies at the heart of the modern re-definition of “authenticity.” From counselors pushing transgender ideology on kids, to Christians deconstructing faith, to the recent trend of “quiet quitting,” many people today think that true authenticity is the only means to real happiness. It means always expressing our feelings, always feeling completely supported in whatever we say or do, and rejecting any relationship that asks us to do otherwise.   The problem, as the late Tim Keller once illustrated, is that this understanding of authenticity is based on a faulty premise.   Imagine an Anglo-Saxon warrior in Britain in AD 800. He has two very strong inner impulses and feelings. One is aggression. He loves to smash and kill people when they show him disrespect. Living in a shame-and-honour culture with its warrior ethic, he will identify with that feeling. He will say to himself, That's me! That's who I am! I will express that. The other feeling he senses is same-sex attraction. To that he will say, That's not me. I will control and suppress that impulse.   Now imagine a young man walking around Manhattan today. He has the same two inward impulses, both equally strong, both difficult to control. What will he say? He will look at the aggression and think, This is not who I want to be, and will seek deliverance in therapy and anger-management programmes. He will look at his sexual desire, however, and conclude, That is who I am.  As Keller concluded, none of us simply choose to “be ourselves” in a vacuum. We constantly sift through contradictory feelings and evaluate them in the light of our values, which are often absorbed from our cultural setting.   The modern vision of “authenticity” is not born merely from an alternative understanding of morality, but from an alternative understanding of anthropology. In a world that has largely rejected God and objective truth as external realities, people increasingly turn inwards in deciding who they are and what they should do.   Any true understanding of self must begin by looking outward and upward, not inward. In the end, we may find conflict between what is true and how we feel. We must choose what is true. As Biola professor Erik Thoennes put it,  There's this idea that to live out of conformity with how I feel is hypocrisy; but that's a wrong definition of hypocrisy. … To live out of conformity to what I believe is hypocrisy. To live in conformity with what I believe, in spite of what I feel, isn't hypocrisy; it's integrity.  In her latest book Live Your Truth and Other Lies, author and apologist Alisa Childers points out another problem with a feelings-first version of authenticity: I can't love myself if I'm fooling myself about who I actually am. If I deny that there is something wrong with humanity (and thus, myself), the kind of love I will offer myself will be the opposite of authentic. It will be artificial authenticity.  While it is completely out of step to think this, Scripture is clear that “the heart is deceitful above all things.”  Today's worship of authenticity requires that we lie to ourselves about this difficult reality. If we do, however, we will never truly know who we are and how we should live.  This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. If you enjoy Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. 

Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam Wanna Meet Us in person? Keep those reviews coming on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fly-on-the-wallin-with-amber-and-ben/id1533129862 “Bad Advice with Amber” is LIVE on Tuesday's at 8/7PM CT follow “amberwallin” on AMP: https://live.onamp.com/amberwallin Amber's Read: Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley Ben's Read: A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

Our guests today are Linda Noble and Linda Stewart, affectionately called “The Lindas.” I love how these two ladies in different seasons of life looked at the world around them and asked, “What is missing that we can add?” They tell us how they joined together to learn and then create something that offers a window into God's design for sex, which fits into the larger story that He wants to be known by us, and He uses His creation—including our own bodies—to pursue a relationship with us. I am excited for you to learn about how God has designed our bodies and our sexuality to invite us into a deeper relationship with Him. We must learn these big truths about God's design in order to invite the young people in our lives to grasp the significance of the gift of sex within marriage. Without the big picture, this seems like just a rule to follow instead of an invitation to flourish.    Before the Sex Talk: A Theology of the Body Perspective for Parents & Mentors by Linda Noble and Linda Stewart  Our Bodies Tell God's Story by Christopher West  Strong Women Episode 31. Our Bodies Proclaim the Gospel with Christopher West  THE Conversation Workshop podcast  THE Conversation Workshop blog   Seeking God: Finding Another Kind of Life with St. Ignatius and Dallas Willard by Trevor Hudson   Josh Glaser Regeneration Ministries  Eden Invitation  The House at the End of the World by Dean Koontz    In the fight against suicide, the Church has a vital role to play, but what does that look like in action? Our next Lighthouse Voices event on September 5 will help you answer that question. Our featured speaker is Dr. Matthew Sleeth, author of Hope Always: How to Be a Force for Life in a Culture of Suicide. Dr. Sleeth will help us understand the current suicide epidemic and share how Christians can fight against it and care for those who are struggling. This event will be offered both in-person and online, and you can register now at colsoncenter.org/lighthousevoices.  To help you live the Truth in a “my truth” world, we want to send you a copy of Alisa Childers' latest book, Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Request your copy by giving a gift of any amount to the Colson Center in August at colsoncenter.org/swchildersresource.   The Strong Women Podcast is a product of the Colson Center which equips Christians to live out their faith with clarity, confidence, and courage in this cultural moment. Through commentaries, podcasts, videos, and more, we help Christians better understand what's happening in the world, and champion what is true and good wherever God has called them.  Learn more about the Colson Center here: https://www.colsoncenter.org/   Visit our website and sign up for our email list so that you can stay up to date on what we are doing here and also receive our monthly book list: https://www.colsoncenter.org/strong-women  Join Strong Women on Social Media:   https://www.facebook.com/StrongWomenCC  https://www.facebook.com/groups/strongwomencommunitycc/  https://www.instagram.com/strongwomencc/ 

Today, we're talking about how getting your theology right is the key to changing your mind and changing your life.Scripture: Isaiah 55:11, Galatians 5Books mentioned:The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. TozerAnother Gospel? by Alisa ChildersLive Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa ChildersThe Jesus I Never Knew by Philip YanceyWhat's So Amazing About Grace by Philip YanceyHelp is Here by Max LucadoClick the link below to access the Hope Is the First Dose playlist of hopeful, healing songs!Hope PlaylistBe sure to check out my new book, Hope Is the First Dose!Here's a free 5-day Bible study on YouVersion/BibleApp based on my new book!

Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam Official Selection at BronzeLens Film Festival Wanna Meet Us in person? Keep those reviews coming on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fly-on-the-wallin-with-amber-and-ben/id1533129862 “Bad Advice with Amber” is LIVE on Tuesday's at 8/7PM CT Follow “amberwallin” on AMP: https://live.onamp.com/amberwallin Jessica Quits her Job: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8N5vcfx/ Support and Follow Jessica: Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/thisisjessicarose/ Tik Tok- https://www.tiktok.com/@thisisjessicarose?lang=en She Really Had a Baby Podcast- https://shereallyhadababy.com/shereallyhadashop/p/what-i-wish-i-knew-before-followers-ebook Ebook- https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1648757794?ign-itscg=30200&ign-itsct=lt_p "Baby Daddy Tears" cup- https://shereallyhadababy.com/shereallyhadashop/p/babydaddy-tears-mug Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo: http://www.leemomusic.com/

Our guests today are Linda Noble and Linda Stewart, affectionately called “The Lindas.” I love how these two ladies in different seasons of life looked at the world around them and asked, “What is missing that we can add?” They tell us how they joined together to learn and then create something that offers a window into God's design for sex, which fits into the larger story that He wants to be known by us, and He uses His creation—including our own bodies—to pursue a relationship with us. I am excited for you to learn about how God has designed our bodies and our sexuality to invite us into a deeper relationship with Him. We must learn these big truths about God's design in order to invite the young people in our lives to grasp the significance of the gift of sex within marriage. Without the big picture, this seems like just a rule to follow instead of an invitation to flourish.   In the fight against suicide, the Church has a vital role to play, but what does that look like in action? Our next Lighthouse Voices event on September 5 will help you answer that question. Our featured speaker is Dr. Matthew Sleeth, author of Hope Always: How to Be a Force for Life in a Culture of Suicide. Dr. Sleeth will help us understand the current suicide epidemic and share how Christians can fight against it and care for those who are struggling. This event will be offered both in-person and online, and you can register now at colsoncenter.org/lighthousevoices.  To help you live the Truth in a “my truth” world, we want to send you a copy of Alisa Childers' latest book, Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Request your copy by giving a gift of any amount to the Colson Center in August at colsoncenter.org/swchildersresource.  The Strong Women Podcast is a product of the Colson Center which equips Christians to live out their faith with clarity, confidence, and courage in this cultural moment. Through commentaries, podcasts, videos, and more, we help Christians better understand what's happening in the world, and champion what is true and good wherever God has called them.  Learn more about the Colson Center here: https://www.colsoncenter.org/   Visit our website and sign up for our email list so that you can stay up to date on what we are doing here and also receive our monthly book list: https://www.colsoncenter.org/strong-women   Join Strong Women on Social Media:   https://www.facebook.com/StrongWomenCC  https://www.facebook.com/groups/strongwomencommunitycc/  https://www.instagram.com/strongwomencc/ 

In her book Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, apologist Alisa Childers breaks down widespread mantras of culture and their consequences. One of these is a misunderstanding of Jesus' words so common that, for many, it may be the eleventh commandment that supplants the other ten: “You shouldn't judge.”   Over the last 60 years, studies have confirmed that Americans have become more tolerant of alternative sexual lifestyles, non-traditional beliefs about God, and certain political identifications, such as Communism. According to the most recent State of Theology report from Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, some 56% of self-described evangelicals believe that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.” Upon closer examination, this shift has far more to do with losing convictions in these areas than about gaining tolerance.   In fact, accepting the “do not judge ethos” has been a primary corrosive agent to those convictions, and this is what Childers addresses in her new book. In addition to identifying the obvious contradiction in saying “it is wrong to judge,” which is itself a judgment, she reminds Christians what Jesus' words mean in context.   [J]ust after saying, “Judge not,” Jesus lets his audience know that when they judge, they should be very careful to make sure their judgment isn't hypocritical. “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye,” Jesus instructs in verse 5. In other words, don't point out a sin in your brother's or sister's life before you confront the bigger sin in your own. But the whole point is to help your brother or sister take the speck out of their own eye, which requires you to judge that it's there. … If there is still any confusion, just a few verses later, Jesus tells us to recognize wolves, or false teachers, by their fruit (verses 15-16). Again, this requires us to judge whether these teachers are speaking truth or deception. Then, in John 7:24, Jesus couldn't say it more plainly. He directs his listeners to “not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”  The point of these verses, she concludes, is not to prevent moral discernment, but to help believers instead judge “carefully, rightly, humbly, and without hypocrisy.” Childers then offers a powerful illustration from her time with ZOEgirl, when her struggle with body image eventually led to a secret eating disorder of binging and purging.   On some tour in some town somewhere, I shared a hotel room with one of my bandmates. She is a sweetheart—gentle, deeply intelligent, and thoughtful. … She was also a natural peacemaker, and confrontation did not come easily to her. So when she worked up every last bit of courage to ask me what I was doing in the bathroom, it surprised me. And it also made me angry. To put it lightly, the conversation didn't go well. I not so politely invited her to stop “judging” me and back all the way off. That didn't stop her. …   Looking back, am I thankful that my bandmate “judged” me? That she dared confront me about the self-harm I was guilty of? Absolutely! She was the catalyst that first brought the darkness into the light. To this day my eyes mist with tears when I think about how much she loved me to do such a difficult thing.  Childers' example not only calls Christians to do similarly difficult but right things, it reveals the consequences of relativism when lived in the real world. What begins as a desire to not judge others turns into the narcissistic demand that no one, under any circumstances, judge us. But that also renders healing and forgiveness impossible. After all, with no way to say that we've been wronged, neither is there means or reason to forgive those who harm us. Any culture that rejects objective morality lacks any way to counter evil.   Alisa Childers' book reclaims truth from the empty slogans that dominate our culture and our thinking. This August, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, we'll send you a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Just go to breakpoint.org/give to learn more.   This Breakpoint was co-authored by Kasey Leander. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. 

Watch the show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/UbYrNo5sWy8   Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam Official Selection at BronzeLens Film Festival   “Bad Advice with Amber” is LIVE on Tuesday's at 8/7PM CT Follow “amberwallin” on AMP: https://live.onamp.com/amberwallin   The Institutional Yes: https://hbr.org/2007/10/the-institutional-yes   Amber and Ben's Watch: "They Cloned Tyrone" on Netflix   Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo: http://www.leemomusic.com/

Our guest today is Rachelle Starr, founder of Scarlet Hope. At 21, Rachelle felt God calling her to minister to women trapped working in strip clubs in her city of Louisville, KY. Today, she shares some of the stories she's witnessed over 16 years of building relationships through good food and introducing these women to the God who sees and loves them. Scarlet Hope is now in many major cities around the nation, working to bring the hope of the Gospel to places that are often overlooked.    Rachelle's Website Scarlet Hope  Outrageous Obedience: Answering God's Call to Shine in the Darkest Places by Rachelle Starr  Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times by John Eldredge  Discernment by Henri J.M. Nouwen  The Way of the Heart by Henri J.M. Nouwen  Tramp for the Lord by Corrie Ten Boom  S3 27: Looking Back and Looking Forward: Reflecting on Three Years of the Strong Women Podcast With Erin Kunkle     In the fight against suicide, the Church has a vital role to play, but what does that look like in action? Our next Lighthouse Voices event on September 5 will help you answer that question. Our featured speaker is Dr. Matthew Sleeth, author of Hope Always: How to Be a Force for Life in a Culture of Suicide. Dr. Sleeth will help us understand the current suicide epidemic and share how Christians can fight against it and care for those who are struggling. This event will be offered both in-person and online, and you can register now at colsoncenter.org/lighthousevoices.  To help you live the Truth in a “my truth” world, we want to send you a copy of Alisa Childers' latest book, Live Your Truth and Other Lies. Request your copy by giving a gift of any amount to the Colson Center in August at colsoncenter.org/swchildersresource.  The Strong Women Podcast is a product of the Colson Center which equips Christians to live out their faith with clarity, confidence, and courage in this cultural moment. Through commentaries, podcasts, videos, and more, we help Christians better understand what's happening in the world, and champion what is true and good wherever God has called them.  Learn more about the Colson Center here: https://www.colsoncenter.org/   Visit our website and sign up for our email list so that you can stay up to date on what we are doing here and also receive our monthly book list: https://www.colsoncenter.org/strong-women  Join Strong Women on Social Media:   https://www.facebook.com/StrongWomenCC  https://www.facebook.com/groups/strongwomencommunitycc/  https://www.instagram.com/strongwomencc/ 

TODAY'S GUEST:  Alisa Childers is a wife, a mom, author, apologist, and speaker. She was a member of the award-winning CCM recording group ZOEgirl and has been published at The Gospel Coalition, Crosswalk, The Stream, For Every Mom, Decision magazine, and The Christian Post. Her book, Another Gospel: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity has become a best-seller. I highly recommend her outstanding podcast. Live Your Truth - And Other Lies We've all seen the memes that populate the internet: live your truth, follow your heart, you only have one life to live. They sound nice and positive. But what if these slogans are actually lies that unhinge us from reality and leave us anxious and exhausted? Another Gospel? author Alisa Childers invites you to examine modern lies that are disguised as truths in today's culture. Everyday messages of peace, fulfillment, and empowerment seem like sentiments of freedom and hope, but in reality they are deeply deceptive.  In Live Your Truth and Other Lies, Alisa will help you to • uncover the common lies repeated within progressive circles • hold on to the soul-restoring truths that God's Word offers • be empowered to live in the way your Creator designed you MORE The Unshaken Faith podcast with Natasha Crain and Alisa Childers. Your Favorite Guests on Stand Up for the Truth! (List & Links) I attended the Asbury Revival and Here's What I Saw Next Step for Apostate Churches: Discuss Removing God's Gender $100 Million Ad Campaign Aims to Get Young Adults to Reconsider Christian Faith 200 Resources You Can Trust!– Be Equipped and ‘Connect the Dots' NEWSBYTES SUPPORT STAND UP FOR THE TRUTH PODCAST WITH BRAND NEW GEAR!

This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, request a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa Childers. Visit colsoncenter.org/august to learn more.   ___ In her new book, author and apologist Alisa Childers targets the lies that often masquerade as cultural proverbs today.  In Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed, Childers offers just what the title promises. She exposes the bad ideas at the center of slogans we hear all the time. You can receive a copy of the book with a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month. Just go to colsoncenter.org/august.  Though the mantras that dominate our world can seem harmless, they are not. “Our culture,” Childers writes,   is brimming with slogans that promise peace, fulfillment, freedom, empowerment, and hope. These messages have become such an integral component of our American consciousness that many people don't even think to question them. … The problem? They are lies.  In fact, Childers argues, slogans like “You are enough,” “authenticity is everything,” “Put yourself first,” “It's all about love,” or “God just wants you to be happy,” commonly redefine words like love and hate and happy. What's left is a modern-day “tower of Babel” (or “Babble”) situation where those with the most social media followers are granted authority and assumed to have expertise on life and how to live it.   At the root of these destructive slogans is a view of the self. For example, Childers cites Glennon Doyle, whose New York Times No. 1 best seller Untamed centers around her decision to leave her husband for a woman she saw at a local zoo, all while quoting Carl Jung: “There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent.”   Alisa compares Doyle's story with that of Elisabeth Elliot, the missionary famous for bringing the Gospel back to the same Waodani people who killed her husband, Jim. With a toddler in tow, Elliot lived in the Waodani village for two years before returning to the United States to speak, write, and appear publicly with some of her husband's killers who had become dedicated followers of Jesus:   Elisabeth Elliot laid hold of deeper strength. … She rejected the urge to defy God's Word or redefine his holiness. … How did she do it? She once wrote, “The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.”  Childers openly admits to struggling with these ideas, including what it means to be truly authentic, during her time as a popular and successful Christian musician:   [A] therapist I began seeing toward the end of ZOEgirl's run (who had the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job) looked at me intently and gently asked, “What if you got throat cancer and could never sing again?” I was dumbstruck. She had stumped me. After all, I was made to sing, and if I couldn't sing, who was I?  That question pushed Alisa away from the shallow definition of authenticity that is widely embraced today, and toward a deeper grounding in the truth of who we are made in the image of God, and yet fallen. This makes all the difference in how we think about ourselves and how we choose to live life:   Today I write. Maybe tomorrow I will wash feet, clean toilets, or start a food blog. God knows. He is trustworthy. My identity is grounded in him. True biblical authenticity is glorifying Christ with whatever gifts and talents he has given me. As my friend Teasi says, this is my calling whether I find myself in a palace or in a prison.  Another commonly repeated, highly consequential lie is that there's such a thing as “your truth” and “my truth”:   Christian, your truth doesn't exist. Your truth won't bring hope or save anyone... The Cross is the answer to every lie that tells me I can find everything I need inside myself. … The Cross is not just a symbol of salvation. It's a place of rest.  This month, for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center, request a copy of Live Your Truth and Other Lies by Alisa Childers. Visit colsoncenter.org/august to learn more.  

Watch the show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_a-vvtJYBKs   Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam Official Selection at BronzeLens Film Festival Wanna Meet Us in person?   “Bad Advice with Amber” is LIVE on Tuesday's at 8/7PM CT Follow “amberwallin” on AMP: https://live.onamp.com/amberwallin   Ben's Read: Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton Amber's Read: De-Transition Baby by Torrey Peters Amber's Watch: And Just Like That…   Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo: http://www.leemomusic.com/

Watch the show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HgylALK3qE4   Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam   “Freestyle Fail” Video Referenced: https://youtu.be/B14BeppSB0w   “3 Cultural Norms” Video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsG50jnrLpW/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==   Amber and Ben's Watch: Courtney Pauroso: Vanessa 5000 Edinburgh Show-https://edinburghfestival.datathistle.com/event/2093125-courtney-pauroso-vanessa-5000/   Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo:  http://www.leemomusic.com/

Watch the Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oghFp19QCww Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo: http://www.leemomusic.com/ Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam Official Selection at BronzeLens Film Festival Wanna Meet Us in person? Keep those reviews coming on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... “Bad Advice with Amber” is LIVE on Tuesday's at 8/7PM CT Follow “amberwallin” on AMP: https://live.onamp.com/amberwallin Ben's Read: Pandora's Star by : Peter F. Hamilton Amber's Read: De-Transition Baby by Torrey Peters

Watch the podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/AkvaLqjryeY   Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo: http://www.leemomusic.com/    Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam  Official Selection at BronzeLens Film Festival    Wanna Meet Us in person? Keep those reviews coming on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fly-on-the-wallin-with-amber-and-ben/id1533129862   “Bad Advice with Amber” is LIVE on  Tuesday's at 8/7PM CT Follow “amberwallin” on AMP: https://live.onamp.com/amberwallin    Ben's Read: Maeve Fly by CJ Leede Amber's Read: De-Transition Baby by Torrey Peters  Amber and Ben's Watch: Swarm directed by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers

Sara Riff is a fashion veteran and Global Director of Entertainment Relations for Jimmy Choo. She is also host of the podcast “Having it All and Other Lies” and a founding member of the nonpartisan organization dedicated to creating a cultural shift around voting and civic engagement, I am a voter. Today she's sharing: How defining her style by 3 words helped her hone in on her aesthetic. How she landed her dream job at Jimmy Choo and how her role has evolved while she's been there. The best feedback she got early on in her career while interviewing for jobs. How fashion, beauty and art have a universal impact on women across the globe.  How shoes can really transform someone's mindset and spirit. Her favorite parts of her job and what skill she is most proud of.  How the ways we shop and consume fashion has evolved over the years.  Why it's important to have an image and a brand no matter who you are.  How having a daughter changed the way she talks to herself and how she feels about body image.  How she became a founding member of the I am a voter organization and what it's been like to see its impact.  How she feels about brands taking a stand on social and political issues.  Her podcast, “Having it All and Other Lies” and why it's so important to her to talk to powerhouse women who admit to not having it all.  Follow her on instagram @sara_riff

Watch the show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/y5pssbQqY2E   Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo:  http://www.leemomusic.com/   Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam   Ben's Read: Siren Queen by Nigh Vo Amber's Read: De-Transition Baby by Torrey Peters   Amber's Watch: MerPeople on Netflix

Watch the podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1wFQ5Ui7wFk Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo: http://www.leemomusic.com/ Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam Ben's Watch: Demons by Lamberto Bava Amber's Read: De-Transition Baby by Torrey Peters 

Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo: http://www.leemomusic.com/ Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam TikTok Video Referenced during #Influenced: https://www.tiktok.com/@burr_iam/video/7246426299802078507?lang=en Ben's Read: Ringworld by Larry Niven Amber's Read: De-Transition Baby by Torrey Peters Go Watch The Blackening!!

Episode Notes:   Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo:  http://www.leemomusic.com/   Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam   Ben's Read: Ringworld by Larry Niven   Amber's Read: We See Each Other by Tre'vell Anderson

Episode Notes:   Intro/Outro Music by Lee Mo:  http://www.leemomusic.com/   Watch “We're” Pregnant and Other Lies on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/wallinfam   Ben's Read: Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones   Amber's Read: We See Each Other by Tre'vell Anderson

Alisa Childers is an American singer and songwriter. She's best known right now for being an Apologist. Prior to becoming known as an Apologist, she was known for being a singer in the all-female Christian band ZOEgirl. She experienced a period of profound doubt about her faith in her mid-thirties. She felt uncertainty and didn't know where to find answers to her questions, or if answers existed at all. She began to investigate her faith intellectually by taking seminary classes and reading everything she could get her hands on. This began her journey from unreasoned doubt into a vibrant, rational, and informed faith. She has written a couple books that have been extremely impactful in mine and my family's life, as well as thousands of others. The first one she wrote was called “Another Gospel” where describes the journey she took over several years as she wrestled with questions that struck at the core of the Christian faith and found the truth. This book is very powerful! Her most recent book,“Live Your Truth & Other Lies,” goes through things we say as Christians that are not true and how that affects our life. If you want to hear ongoing Bible teaching, if you're interested in the historicity of the Bible and the doctrines of the Christian faith, listen to her on her podcast “Alisa Childers Podcast.” She's able to network and interview with many experts in different aspects of the Christian faith. She herself is an expert! I highly recommend following her on any of her platforms. You can learn more and follow Alisa Childers through the resources below: - Website - https://alisachilders.com- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alisachilders/- Alisa Childers Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-alisa-childers-podcast/id1260262855 - Alisa Childers YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@alisachilders - Unshaken Faith Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unshaken-faith/id1657921515 - Unshaken Faith Conference - https://unshakenconference.com - "Another Gospel?" - https://amzn.to/3JJJ3qC - "Live Your Truth and Other Lies" - https://amzn.to/3JLEtbm Mentioned in this video: - "Is the Enneagram a Trojan Horse in the Church? With Marcia Montenegro" - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/81-is-the-enneagram-a-trojan-horse-in-the/id1260262855?i=1000570504204 - "How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth" by Gordon D. Fee - https://amzn.to/3Tp14Oj- Voetberg Music Academy - Use coupon code YOUTUBE for 10% off each month - https://www.voetbergacademy.com - The Growth Initiative: Now open for enrollment! www.nowthatwereafamily.com/thegrowthinitiative Save $150 by purchasing the Get it All Done Club Home Management Course and Growth Initiative for Men together: https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/offers/S3GJdvSm/checkout - Top 5 Tuesday Join our weekly email list to keep up to date with the highlights of what is going on in our family life. https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/top-5-tuesday-newletter - Homeschool Course: https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/homeschool Get It All Done Club: https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/get-it-all-done-club - Looking for more Now That We're A Family resources? We got 'em! Website: https://www.nowthatwereafamily.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nowthatwereafamily/OUR FAMILY MUSIC ACADEMY: https://www.voetbergmusicacademy.com Use coupon code: YOUTUBE for 10% off each month - Is your life just too complicated to ever feel peaceful? Check out Katie's Free Home Management Masterclass:https://www.nowthatwereafamily.com/get-it-all-done-club

It's the seventeenth annual iFanboy All Media Year End Roundup! Conor Kilpatrick, Josh Flanagan, and special guest Ron Richards (who was battling a cold) discuss some of what they enjoyed in media in this, the weird year that was 2022. Movies, television, music, books, games, and comics -- it's all here! (Disclaimer: Ron Richard's opinions are his own and do not represent Marvel Entertainment or the Walt Disney Corporation.) Note: Timecodes are subject to change depending on dynamic ad insertion by the distributor. Running Time: 02:41:08 Movies: 00:02:06 - Top Gun: Maverick 00:04:36 - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 00:07:43 - Don't Worry Darling 00:09:32 - Everything Everywhere All At Once 00:11:57 - The Fabelmans 00:14:32 - The Outfit 00:16:01 - Armageddon Time 00:18:27 - The Banshees of Inisherin 00:20:15 - Bullet Train 00:22:21 - See How They Run 00:23:54 - Devotion 00:28:06 - Moonfall 00:29:27 - Confess, Fletch 00:32:32 - Weird: The Al Yankovic Story 00:37:11 - Hustle Television: 00:39:17 - Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty 00:42:08 - Only Murders in the Building 00:44:02 - The Crown 00:45:46 - The Bear 00:49:37 - The Offer 00:53:47 - The Good Fight 00:56:06 - The Gilded Age 00:58:35 - The Vow 01:00:25 - Yellowstone / 1883 01:03:43 - For All Mankind 01:05:01 - Better Things 01:07:09 - Atlanta 01:09:29 - The Sandman 01:11:41 - Welcome to Wrexham 01:16:48 - Reservation Dogs Books: 01:20:52 - "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald 01:23:05 - "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk" by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain 01:25:36 - "The Devil May Dance: A Novel" by Jake Tapper 01:27:10 - "Leviathan Falls" by James S.A. Corey 01:29:06 - "Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty" by Patrick Raddon Keefe 01:32:11 - "Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City" by K.J. Parker 01:34:33 - "Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers" by James Andrew Miller 01:37:13 - "The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down" by Colin Woodard 01:39:01 - "Five Decembers" by James Kestrel 01:40:09 - "The Wright Brothers" by David McCullough 01:41:52 - "Amoralman: A True Story and Other Lies" by Derek DelGaudio 01:43:17 - "Cinema Speculation" by Quentin Tarantino 01:44:43 - "Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks" by Chris Herring Music: 01:47:12 - "Plosivs" by Plosivs 01:49:01 - Bob Dylan at The Hollywood Pantages Theatre 01:50:49 - The Wedding Present Singles01:53:18 - Sunny Day Real Estate at House of Blues 01:55:56 - Jackson Browne at The Santa Barbara Bowl 01:57:12 - "Repair and Reward" by Lincoln 01:59:30 - First Six Dischord Records 02:00:48 - "A Light for Attracting Attention" by The Smile and live at Roadrunner 02:03:06 - "Autofiction" by Suede and live at Kings Theatre 02:08:03 - Bleached at Lodge Room 02:09:39 - Weird Al Yankovic at Chevalier Theatre Games: 02:12:20 - Marvel SNAP 02:19:42 - Return to Monkey Island 02:20:27 - Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, Revelations, Black Flag, and Origins 02:21:39 - Kingdom Rush, Frontiers, Origins, and Vengeance 02:23:17 - NBA 2K22 Comics: 02:25:36 - The Human Target 02:26:46 - Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow 02:27:36 - Batman/Superman: World's Finest 02:28:29 - That Texas Blood 02:29:19 - Do A Powerbomb! 02:30:01 - Eight Billion Genies 02:30:48 - She-Hulk 02:31:33 - Fantastic Four 02:32:22 - Nightwing 02:33:11 - DC vs. Vampires Brought To You By: • iFanboy Patrons - Become one today for as little as $3/month! Or make a one time donation of any amount! • iFanboy T-Shirts and Merch - Show your iFanboy pride with a t-shirt or other great merchandise on Threadless! We've got TWELVE designs! For More From Ron Richards: • Visit Marvel.com! • Watch All About Android! • If you're into pinball, check out Scorbit! Music: "Jingle Bells" Frank Sinatra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices