Media
73 conversations where the hosts get into media.
73 conversations
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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
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The medium is the message
- Is it incumbent upon the church to hitch itself to the fastest media wagon?
Jay joins an extended discussion of Marshall McLuhan's line that the medium is the message: once the church ties itself to a platform like DirecTV or Facebook, it encourages people to use that medium for everything else on it too.
From No. 422 · Jesus, Technology and Persecution
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News spin, buckets, and advertising culture
- To what extent are you responsible for other people's perception of what you say?
The hosts work the question: news is delivered as fact-plus-spin and audiences only read their own spin; people sort each other into buckets ('compassionate liberal,' 'heartless wingnut') to avoid complicated middle-of-the-road conversations.
From No. 360 · Divided We Thrive
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RELEVANT article, part 3: constant guilt, millennials, grace vs guilt
- Is guilt a legitimate motivator for Christian service?
Problem 3: 'you constantly feel guilty.' The hosts dispute that millennials are the most informed generation — access to YouTube, Facebook, and Google mostly feeds cat videos and Kardashian trends, not learning.
From No. 234 · The Messiah Complex
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Media bias and free speech
- Do we believe in free speech for all, or only free speech for the things we agree with?
A host defends NPR against bias claims; Mike counters with NPR's firing of Juan Williams over his Fox News remarks about Muslims on planes.
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Is downloading a lost CD piracy?
- Is it piracy to download a broadcast show you missed or a CD you lost?
The hosts debate whether downloading a broadcast show you missed, a lost CD, Citizen Kane or E.T. is stealing — with a wrecked-car analogy — and mostly conclude it's wrong, detouring through julio.com and peacoats.
From No. 33 · Why Do I Need To Go To Church?
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Terry Jones and the free Hyundai
- Was Terry Jones's Koran-burning threat a legitimate Christian witness or just a publicity stunt?
The hosts discuss Florida pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, whose threatened Koran burning drew a free 2011 Hyundai Accent offer from Brad Benson Hyundai in New Brunswick if he backed down.
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The Koran-burning pastor, ICP's claim, and Squad Five-O
- Do the ends ever justify the means in Christian witness?
The hosts compare the Sioux City pastor to other attention-seeking spectacle: the Florida Koran-burning pastor, Insane Clown Posse's claim that they were Christians all along, and the band Squad Five-O, whose one profane lyric ended their Christian-market career.
From No. 30 · Tyson vs. Holyfield
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The men who laid the roads aren't the baby-girl examples
Boova says the baby-girl exemplars (Timothée Chalamet types) are not the men who laid the concrete roads or built the electrical grid the critics use to post their takes — a misunderstanding of reality versus the Fred-Flintstone-plus-Al-Bundy caricature.
From No. 520 · Bring Your Purse to Brunch
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Culture is the mission field; own your worldview
A host's daughter is studying with a friend who has zero Christian background — he never imagined America would feel like the mission field.
From No. 466 · Put Your Name On It
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Election entrenchment and the shallowness of information
A host describes faithful people willing to 'go down in a flaming sword' over the Georgia vote recount, tracing a pattern of believing without investigating: people latch onto cultural-level information and never go one step deeper.
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The CNN Belief Blog as distraction
A host reports going to the CNN Belief Blog for show topics and finding it worthless: its premise is arguing tenets of the faith or whose faith is wrong, a format in which nobody's mind is ever changed.
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The church as institution vs. relationship with Christ
Reacting to the billboard, the hosts discuss when the church started publicly calling out its own failures: Ananias and Sapphira as proof the church was always full of jerks, the…
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Westboro's 'Crazy Train' and the gospel preached anyway
A host recounts Westboro Baptist Church members singing an Ozzy Osbourne parody at a press conference and calls them ridiculous and damaging to the church witness.
From No. 30 · Tyson vs. Holyfield
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Which Jesus are you? Vintage videos and offense
The hosts discuss Luke 15 and the Pharisees who 'muttered' at Jesus eating with sinners, then defend the much-panned 'Vintage Jesus' videos from Vintage Church: the Hollywood…
From No. 21 · Jehosaphat Wasn't Really a Jumper
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State of the Bible 2025: men reading more, and the three-times-a-year bar
- Does the State of the Bible 2025 report show real Bible engagement growth among men?
The hosts react to the American Bible Society's 2025 State of the Bible report: nearly 10 million more Americans engaged the Bible than in 2024, with men closing the engagement gap across every generation.
From No. 556 · A Christian Mid-Life Crisis
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Joe's complaint-line letter on phones and podcasts replacing media
- Is relying on my phone a problem when it's how I get all my news, entertainment, and education now?
A complaint-line letter from Joe asks whether relying on the phone is really a problem when it's how all media is consumed now — podcasts having replaced TV, magazines, and newspapers for his generation.
From No. 490 · QuickTrip Johnson
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George Barna's four ways to combat media influence on kids
- What are the four ways Christian parents can combat media's influence on their children's lives?
The hosts work through a George Barna piece listing four M's parents should use against harmful media influence.
From No. 446 · Fresh Perspectives
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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…
From No. 413 · Ghosts, Humility and Bad Memories
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Real fear, incomplete data, and confirmation bias
- What are fallible humans supposed to do when complete, unbiased data is unavailable?
Ben distinguishes real fear from fear the facts don't warrant — his example is someone terrified a car will spin off a cul-de-sac into their house — and argues everyone grabs the…
From No. 406 · A COVID Debrief
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Lauren Daigle, the Ellen Show, and light in dark places
- Should Christians take their talents to secular platforms like the Ellen Show?
The hosts dig into the backlash against Christian singer Lauren Daigle for performing on The Ellen Show.
From No. 356 · Hide It Under A Bush