Your memory is lying to you: the Toyota story
- Can we trust our memories of what we experienced?
A host recounts podcast episodes about the unreliability of memory, starting with the Toyota unintended-acceleration scare: black-box data showed panicked drivers pressing the accelerator while convinced they were on the brake, Car and Driver could not reproduce a failure, and Toyota still lost billions to fines and a recall. The takeaway is that the media narrative stuck because people did not want to believe human error was the cause.
More on Media
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Dear LFTP: should meteorologists stop saying 'gloomy'?
- Should TV meteorologists stop calling rainy weather miserable, gloomy, or dreary?
A host reads a letter complaining that TV meteorologists calling rain 'miserable,' clouds 'gloomy,' and gray days 'dreary' is irresponsible toward emotionally vulnerable viewers.
From No. 492 · Show Me The Toes
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Declining faith and deaths of despair study
- Is declining faith fueling a rise in deaths of despair?
A host reads a Daily Mail article on a Wellesley College study linking rising 'deaths of despair' (suicide, alcohol and opioid abuse) among middle-aged white Americans to declining faith and church attendance.
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What kids face that parents misread: identity, media, truth in love
- What are kids facing today that their parents are not seeing correctly?
Asked what teenagers experience that parents do not see correctly, Jenny points to media and identity, including sexual and gender identity, which parents do not know what to do with.
From No. 480 · Youth Initiative
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Nathaniel's book-writing crisis, false teachers, and protecting what matters
- How much Christian writing about Jesus is gasbagging versus genuinely necessary?
- How do you identify false teaching?
Nathaniel is in a crisis after reading N. T. Wright's Simply Jesus, feeling like a dumb dumb next to eloquent writers, which opens a discussion of the hubris of writing books…
From No. 454 · Read, Protect, and Complain About Your Husband