Episode Details

Luke and I do some quick check-ins regarding the news in DC, why Gomer doesn't watch the news, and how that can be healthy. Then we take a brief detour and talk Project 86, WandaVision, and such, then dive into Symbolic Representation, Mythology, and why the Sacraments just seem like bizarre add-ons to an otherwise rational faith.

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• Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business: Postman, Neil, Postman, Andrew: 8601420133051: Amazon.com: Books — What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever. "It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.
• Amazon.com: How to Watch TV News (Audible Audio Edition): Jeff Riggenbach, Neil Postman, Steve Powers, Blackstone Audio, Inc.: Audible Audiobooks — A guide to watching television news discusses the calculated programming, the viewer manipulation, and the big business behind today's news networks and shows readers how to interpret what they are hearing and seeing. Original.
• Secular Monks by Andrew Taggart | Articles | First Things — It seems that something outside the domains of economics and ­sexuality bears on the question before us. My hypothesis is religious. The men I have in mind are “secular monks” who embrace a secular “immanent frame,” ascetic self-possession, and a stringent version of human agency. This secular monasticism may be generating a new kind of celibacy. In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor coins the term “immanent frame” with a view to describing what it’s like to live in the modern world. “We come,” he writes, “to understand our lives as taking place within a self-­sufficient immanent order.” It is an order that requires nothing transcendent in order to function. It seems to arise out of itself and unfold according to its own internal, self-­perpetuating logic.

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