Well, hello and welcome back to the Speak Life podcast. This is episode 465. My name's Thomas Thurgood, Media Producer at Speak Life, and today I am joined by Nate Morganlock. Hello.
SPEAKER_00Hi Thomas, this is strange, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Just the two of us having a chat on the podcast. What's happening? I don't know. But it's nice. I'm enjoying it already.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you. It's lovely to be here with you. We thought we'd do an episode on about a video that you made this week for the Reform Mythologist YouTube channel. So for anyone who's new to Speak Life, we have the Speak Life YouTube channel, which is where we have a lot of interviews with you at also, but mainly with Glenn Scrivener talking to all sorts of people about the meaning crisis and stuff. But we have this other newer YouTube channel called Reform Mythologist, which is kind of your domain. What do you do on Reform Mythologist?
SPEAKER_00So I do the logos of mythos from a reformed perspective.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I thought that's what it was.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's thinking about story and storytelling from a Christian point of view, and that gives you a good excuse to watch an awful lot of cartoons and um and movie trailers and music videos and all sorts of other stuff because there's kind of stories everywhere. Everywhere, Thomas.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so on that note, you've done your popcorn parenting series with James Carey, which was a podcast originally, but we're bringing it under the wing of Reform Mythologist as videos, so all sorts of uh Pixar and Disney and DreamWorks animations that you've talked about from a Christian perspective. You did a reaction to the Barbie trailer recently.
SPEAKER_00I'm very excited about that film. I'm also excited about Oppenheimer, the new Christopher Nolan film that comes out on the same day. But Greta Celeste Gerwig's Barbie. I think it's gonna be uh very interesting movie.
SPEAKER_02Will there be any more of a contrast in two films coming out on the same day? I don't think so. That's great. So, but then this week you did a video called Reaction in Capitals. Reaction. Lewis Capaldi, Glastonbury, 2023. So what's the story there?
SPEAKER_00What's the story? Well, so Lewis Capaldi, or to give him his his true name, The Scottish Beyoncé, uh is a 26-year-old singer-songwriter from a small town just outside Glasgow. And around about 2018 he became uh very uh successful, had many, many, many, many downloads on Spotify of his songs, and a very successful first album, and then um he's since released a second album, which has also done very, very well, um, and there was a Netflix documentary about him that I watched uh with my wife uh just last weekend. So I found that very interesting. The only other way I'd heard of Lewis Capaldi was that Noel Gallagher, the uh singer the songwriter from Oasis, you might have heard of them. Uh Noel Gallagher once said uh in an interview that he didn't like Lewis Capaldi. He says, like, who's who's this Lewis Capaldi? Like, do a proper kind of Mancunian thing, and um then Lewis Capaldi at his next gig uh wore a kind of gr olive green Parker coat and a bucket hat and walked out with a swagger like Liam Gallagher used to do, and then he took off the coat and he had a big picture of uh Noel Gallagher in a heart. So he's sort of trolling the fact that Noel Gallagher didn't like him. I think Noel Gallagher's kids were like massive Lewis Cabaldi fans, anyway. So that's the only time I'd I'd ever heard of Lewis Cabaldi before, and that was about 2018. And then watching this documentary, I was like, oh, this guy's actually really kind of charismatic, he's really interesting, he's very open. Um he's a he seems like a guy that you'd love to spend time with. Um not safe for work, I wouldn't this is not a a children's documentary. Um his language is a little fruity, and I don't just mean the Scottish. But the um yeah, Louis Cabaldi just came on to my horizon, and then I watched his 2023 Glastonbury set, and then discovered that there was a whole news story about what happened at his Glastonbury set this last weekend.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Now I'm gonna push back on you a tiny bit here, Nate, because it's okay. But then you come upon this article that talks about how Louis Capaldi uh had it was struggling on on stage at Glastonbury and the crowd, you know, sing his song for him. Yeah. You're like, this is lovely. There's a lot we'd want to kind of commend. Affirm in this. Yeah. So why what's the problem?
SPEAKER_00What's the pro so basically, and this comes out in the documentary, uh, Lu Scaraldi is very, very nervous about I'll I'll get to the exactly what the problem I think is with the reporting of what happened on Saturday at Glastonbury. In the documentary, Luis Cabaldi's feeling the pressure of now being famous and the pressure of writing a second album, and that is really difficult, it's like notoriously difficult for making the second album because you know you've got all this attention on you, you've got deadlines to hit, you've got all these media responsibilities, and you're still expected to produce the goods, and so you're struggling with the world being a different place, people treating you very differently, and you're now trying to write music under the spotlight, and you're performing to massive crowds of people, you're you've got scrutiny like you never had before. So, in the course of the documentary, he talks about his anxiety, and that manifests itself in ticks. So he's he's sort of his shoulders twitching quite a lot, and his dad sort of picks him up on it and sort of asks if everything's okay. Towards the end of the documentary, uh, it I think it was March 20 2022, he's diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome, which is a strange thing to get a Tourette's diagnosis as an adult, it's usually sort of recognised much younger in children, but it it's it's very connected to this anxiety and this pressure of being a celebrity and all that sort of stuff. He then uh is doing his his concerts and his gigs around the world, and in the build-up to Glastonbury this year, 2023, he had to cancel a few of his gigs because he was just feeling the pressure, and then he did Glastonbury, and during that gig, as had happened a few times before, uh his ticks got really quite bad, he was really struggling with them, and he wasn't able to sing his song, wasn't he able to finish his set? And the story is that the the crowd sing his song for him while he stands and holds onto the microphone and sort of looks out at them. So um this was then presented as the crowd rescues Louis Capaldi. The the crowd heroically reaches down into the pit and lifts up this this poor struggling man. And I just wanted to say, did they though is that really what happened? Is is that is that that odd what happened there? Because and as I start the the YouTube video with uh it's hardly breaking news that a um a music festival crowd sings along with a popular song.
SPEAKER_02That's interesting. So your critique, if there is one, well, there is one, is not uh not of Lewis Compounding himself. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00I so I really like him. He actually reminds me of Peter Kaye, who's a sort of uh comedian from Garlic Bread. Yeah, the garlic bread bloke, amongst others, yeah. And you're not really criticising the crowd. No, I mean they're just having a lovely time. They're they're doing what they're really enjoying, do they're doing what they paid to do, which is to go to stand together and to sing along with Louis Capaldi. They were planning to sing along to the song Someone You Loved anyway. So your issue is with the framing of the story, the the reporting of the story, which says this crowd heroically rescued Louis Capaldi. Like, if someone was going to a Neil Diamond concert and he starts singing Sweet Caroline, right, and they start singing along, that's not weird, that's not out of the ordinary, it's not above and beyond. It's the very least that you would expect a crowd to do, right? They're fans of this this performer and they like this song, they like singing it together. So the the sort of the there's no sacrifice, I suppose that's part of my critique, is when you have a crowd as hero mythos, which it happens elsewhere as well, then you're you've got heroism without sacrifice, and I think the more we talk about story and storytelling, the more our attention is drawn to what is a hero. And so on on the podcast, we've had an episode where I'm sort of talking about the the the new ideas of what heroism actually is. Um, and and there is a because of the gospel, the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world, um the the giving of oneself in sacrificial love is inherent to the Christian idea of of the gospel and and to Christ as as saviour. It didn't cost them anything, Thomas. That's my point. It was like the least they could do.
SPEAKER_02That's really interesting. Yeah, that's episode 457. What is heroism? If anyone would like to go and listen to Nate's take on heroism. But a phrase you use in the video is mutual salvation, and so this sense of you know that the crowd on this occasion help Lewis Capaldi out when he's in need. Maybe Lewis Capaldi is part of the crowd another time and joins in the song, and so this sense that we're all sometimes the hero and part of the heroic crowd, and sometimes we're in need of the affirmation. Is that kind of what you were getting out of?
SPEAKER_00And I think I as regards just human relationships, that's perfectly uh normal, that's accepted, that's what we should expect to do, is which is to sort of uh as Bob Dylan says in Forever Young, may you always do for others and let others do for you. So there is a kind of mutuality, the one-anothering of the of the epistles where um we're told to to love one another, uh, and the the the sense that we kind of need one another within within the gospel. Um I suppose one of the issues with uh mutuality and salvation is that it fits an age which wants to put self at the centre and which wants to uh say that how the how you feel about yourself is the most important thing about you. It it's in it's very self-referential, it's it's the r as Carl Truman's book, the rise and triumph of the modern self. So what you're kind of I think seeing in that process or the framing of that as this is the glorious human spirit being kind of laid out is an inoculation against the kind of approach to oneself that we should have in the gospel, like that you are in relationship to God and that you are loved by God, that there is the fundamentally you are about a um a vertical relationship, um which has been fixed for you by God Himself, and so you're kind of bound up into that, and the that kind of um interconnectivity of the crowd and their relationship with Lewis Capaldi as something remarkable, I think is just not true.
SPEAKER_02It's not remarkable, yes, it's quite a low bar for heroism, isn't it? You just gotta sing along, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sing along with a song that you were planning to sing anyway, um, and which normally, even before he was struggling really with his his tourette, um ordinarily he would sing the first couple of lines and then turn the microphone over, which we show multiple examples of that in the in the video as well. That that's you know it's like Robbie Williams singing Angels. That's what the crowd is there to do.
SPEAKER_02Hi folks, it's Thomas Thoroughgood here, media producer at Speak Life. You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bits on the podcast. It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will. And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord server. It's an online platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team. We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way. So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. Okay, back to the podcast. Are there other examples of the crowd is hero kind of in our in our culture, would you say?
SPEAKER_00Um I suppose, I mean there are obviously there are different kinds of crowds, right? So you've got the crowds of at a music festival, and then you would think of the crowds at like a football match or something, um, in which the crowd can kind of rally behind their team and you know try to sing you know to encourage them. Um but the crowd substituting themselves for the players on the pitch, which is kind of what the the news reporting of this was. Luis Cabaldi couldn't sing, so he kind of sits onto the bench and then the crowd get up and sing for him. Well, the crowd doesn't come onto the pitch in a football match and start sort of that would be maybe playing there. It would I mean I think that's how our football originally started, wasn't it? It was just all crowd, everyone player, crowd, they were the same thing. We're one player short, yeah, where is 20,000? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's an interesting comparison, isn't it? Because yeah, in the case of football, it's it's the players that are doing the heavy lifting. The victory, the winning team, it's it's on account of the players who are playing the football. And the crowd might have an impact in raising their morale, but it's it's pretty minimal compared to the victory that's gained by the players. Whereas, yeah, maybe in the case of the music festival, because we can sing as a crowd, and that there is a way we can help out, yeah. There's maybe this elevated sense of crowd is hero going on.
SPEAKER_00But also, like what else were they gonna do? They were not gonna wait, just stand and and just go, why is he not singing? What's what's got boo you know we want our money back, yeah. They were going to as I say, so it's the idea that this was this was a a kind of heroic act, um, or it was you know proof of the the true goodness of of the human heart. I was like no.
SPEAKER_02So you're kind of saying we should not be regarding this as remarkable.
SPEAKER_00In in no way whatsoever was that remarkable. Um yeah, it's which case one would say why are you remarking on it? You know, which fine. I mean, that's a fair point, you know. Um there's always something happening. We've done a 10-minute long video and then we're doing a half an hour long broadcast. But uh but the other thing to say is that when it comes to music festivals, uh like Glastonbury, is that it it is it has pretty much blanket coverage on the BBC. So you have the national broadcaster who is showing these national treasures and talking as enthusiastically as possible. So you've you've got the kind of the closest thing to a national religion that you know, and and it's in Glastonbury, right, which is one of the most kind of uh genuinely pagan kind of you know um places that you can be. Um and so there is a there is a commentary around what happens at these in these gigs at this festival, which is which is high f you know, it it it's extended beyond its reality because it's about all we've got to hold on to. And I suppose when people have those transcendent, you know, experiences at a musical festival are they becoming as I said inoculated to what genuine connection with God is because they're saying, Oh, that that was enough. That's enough for me. That that was like my spirituality is to go and stand in a field in the summertime in Somerset and to sing along to the songs of Lewis Capaldi, Elton John, Rick Astley, who is apparently quite a hit this year. Um he's never given up. Well, he won't he won't do that, though. Yeah, that's what they say. Um but that you want to say push further into that and to say that there is something else, because this is a very it's a very easy, very th therapeutic, very it doesn't demand anything of you. I mean, apart from quite a bit of money and you know several hours of sleep and all that sort of stuff. You're putting yourself in a slightly uncomfortable position to go to this this festival. Um but there's a much better gospel um of the one who who reaches down into the pit and rescues us.
SPEAKER_02That's yeah, that's very helpful. Although you did point out in in the in the video that if you look closely at the footage there is a better gospel picture than the one that the the news uh broadcasters have identified.
SPEAKER_00So I want to to raise a glass and to to honour uh those fathers, boyfriends, uh friends, husbands who are literally carrying their their children, uh friends, girlfriends, spouses on their shoulders. They're literally carrying them. Uh and that who does the camera point to? It points to, it picks out these generally young women who are sitting on someone else's shoulders who are singing along. And there's there is a there is a man at the bottom of that who is who is struggling to breathe in the heat so that his girlfriend can sing along to a Lewis Capaldi song, and she can be honoured as a great kind of hero of the ages. He's not really thinking about the concert, he's just he's been in training for weeks to stand up in a crowd of 80,000 people in blistering heat. Um, he's not going to get the recognition, apart from on this podcast, apart from right now, to be told he's he's doing a genuinely Christ-like thing, hoisting someone onto your shoulders.
SPEAKER_02You should release an article this week saying people in Glastonbury crowd carry grown adults on their shoulders for the purpose of singing along to a song that they know the words to.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, those those are the real the real heroes.
SPEAKER_02And that does make me think a bit of the parable of the lost sheep in how the the shepherd goes out and hoists the the lost sheep onto his shoulders.
SPEAKER_00Onto the Shechem, I think it is, that onto the well not in the New Testament because it's creek, but onto the shoulders. You know, the government will be on his shoulders as well. If you back to the Isaiah passages, um does that is that what it means when people say you've you've shouldered a burden? Yeah, you you've put it. On your you've hoisted onto your shoulders. Yeah, lot of a lot of shoulders. Hoisting. There was a lot of hoisting going on that went unknown, unseen, unrecognised, and uncelebrated.
SPEAKER_02The unrecognized hoisting. That'll be the title of the article. That's it. Um Yeah, one thing it did remind me of is uh an episode of Doctor Who, if I might may briefly uh rec on this.
SPEAKER_00Of course, because there's an organic connection because Lewis Cabaldi, I don't know if you knew this, Thomas, is a relative of Peter Cabaldi, who was the doctor. The 74th doctor. Scottish basically. What number doctor was Peter Cabaldi? Come on, Hoovian. He was twelve. Twelve? The twelfth doctor, indeed. Yeah. So sorry. Uh what's the I've never ever seen a full episode of Doctor Who. So you can explain this one to me.
SPEAKER_02I'm a bit of a Hoovian, but this is from series three, which came out in so it's an episode that came out in 2007 called Last of the Time Lords. And what got me thinking about this was this idea of Crowd as hero. So there's a situation in that where Doctor Who is obviously the hero of the show, the Doctor, the Doctor. The main character. And so he's the hero, but in this episode, he Who was the doctor in this episode? David Tennant.
SPEAKER_00Oh.
SPEAKER_02Uh that would be cool if it was Peter compared to the colour.
SPEAKER_00One of the good one of the great doctors. It would have been great. But it was the same person because they're the same person, are they? Exactly. Regeneration.
SPEAKER_02So he's bound up and he's in a very tight spot. And his companion, Martha, goes out to the nations to share this message, this good news about the doctor, and people gradually start to rally together and start to cry out his name, basically, kind of like a prayer. So it's it's very much drawing on overt Christian themes. I think Russell T. Davies is deliberately inverting and taking things from the Bible, but he's clearly kind of referencing it. So then the crowd are kind of rallying and and kind of chanting the name of the doctor, and this actually allows the doctor to kind of overcome his captivity. It's actually this, it's their faith in him that allows him to kind of escape his bonds and and rise again. And that is, I guess, yeah, thinking about this conversation, that is an inversion of the gospel, isn't it? Because in in that case, you've got it's their faith in him that saves the day. Whereas the the true hero, you know, we're helpless. We're the ones who need the help, and it's it's the hero who gains the victory for us and on our behalf, and then by faith we receive him. But yeah, do you think it comes from a sense of as humans we want to believe that we're pretty good and we can rally together to help to save the day.
SPEAKER_00I think I think we could this cultural moment in which we are, and have been for a little while now, um, we have the rise in triumph of the modern self, as Carl Truman would tell you. Of course. Having edited an hour of him for another podcast, that is quite a good impression. Well, um, I I was almost taught by him, um, which is why I constantly do an accent uh an impression. But anyway, so we have this sense of um we are a profoundly sort of narcissistic and self-congratulatory culture. So we have the the iPhone and the and YouTube, which are incredibly individualistic, and we're all about sort of um saving ourselves, and and that's really what we we feel compelled to do at all opportunities. That's generally the way that we're approaching issues within our culture, and so any story that we have that allows us to see ourselves as the great redeemer um is uh is one that is going to be elevated. Uh so as I was saying, you know, the BBC are going to want to frame as many things within Glastonbury as a kind of the the glories of of of secular humanism, uh the glories of of of the human race. Aren't we aren't we impressive? And just think what we could do if we work together. Um I think the Bible has a very different perspective on who we are as human beings, and if you read the account of the Tower of Babel, a very different idea of what sort of terrible thing we might do if we all work together. And so, yeah, there there are really questions about about what does it mean to be made in the image of God to have this kind of sensus divinitatus, this idea that we have that that God exists and that we are in relationship with Him whether we like Him or not. And then you've got the question of what has happened to us as human beings after the fall, and where do we become idolaters and where is our worship misguided? And then the question of what ought we to do as Christians in giving an apologia for the Christian faith. So is our is our focus on uh commending the good and affirming the good and celebrating anything that sounds vaguely spiritual? Oh yeah, brilliant, keep that. Oh yeah, that's fantastic. Oh, you had a spiritual experience singing Elton John songs at Glastonbury, excellent, yeah. That's basically just exactly the same as as Jesus, but just sing got songs of Jesus instead. Just do what you're already doing, but just call it Jesus instead. Or do we have this thing that says, no, actually, we we all need to repent and believe the gospel, and so that there is something profoundly wrong uh going on at Glastonbury. And I suppose the the the challenge that we've got is do we only ever emphasize what uh the non-Christian world around us is doing well and say, yeah, just or when when do we challenge them and say there's something here which is actually really really dangerous because it's leading you further from Christ, it's inoculating you to the gospel, it's hardening your heart against the idea that you might need saving, and not just because you'll have an off day and someone else is gonna finish your song, but that you actually need saving from yourself. Um so that that is the apologetic challenge of living in in any age, but also uh that particularly we're trying to parse out here at Speak Life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that challenge of kind of receive, reject, redeem. I've heard uh people talk about on other podcasts. Uh popcorn theology, I think, use it. Okay. This sense that there are the challenges, as you say, we've got there are ideas we want to receive, there are ideas we want to reject outright, and then there are ideas that well, actually not quite, but yeah, viewed through this way. But so pushback you did, and uh it is maybe our most uh divisive video we've released on Reform Mythologists, so it got 13 likes and five dislikes. So big numbers we're talking about here. Um so far, it's uh still getting viewed a lot, but uh so 72% approval rate.
SPEAKER_00Uh I could take that. Yeah, that's I don't think I've ever scored higher than that in anything.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, thank you. That's that's very helpful thinking this through. So do you do sing along in the crowd when the singer is in need, just don't pat yourself on the back for it.
SPEAKER_00Perfect.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00It's the least you could do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. In the video, you mentioned the upcoming Speak Life Intensive for anyone who wants to you know dig into these sorts of things a bit deeper. Could you tell us a bit more about that?
SPEAKER_00A little more about that. September the 18th to the 22nd, uh, 2023. Uh, we shall be gathering here in our Eastbourne studios to think about being both proclaimers and storytellers. So Glenn will be doing some teaching, I'll be doing some teaching. Uh, we have spoken word artist Mike Hood, who's coming down from Cambridge, to join us uh to help us think through how we can use spoken word. And we also have a man who works uh as a Christian, uh, he works for Warhammer making orcs, he designs orcs and space marines and things like that for Warhammer. So we're gonna be chatting to him as well. Um, we'll also go through a bit more of what we're doing with the 321 course and um how that is both proclaiming and storytelling.
SPEAKER_02And great. So, yeah, we've got the spoken word session, we've got the awkward session.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, yeah, and who's it for, Nate? Who's it for? Um, it's not for everyone. Because you're supposed to say it's for everyone. It okay, it's for anyone. Uh it's for anyone who is interested in thinking about preaching the gospel and telling stories from a Christian perspective. Uh now we think about all forms of storytelling. We'll, you know, we'll think about different types of storytelling, we'll think about different types of proclamation and how we present the gospel and all that sort of stuff. Um, so yeah, it's for it's it's not it's maybe not for everyone, but it is for anyone who's interested in that thing. I don't know how to really answer that question. But with their spaces are are limited and they are going, so you need to be quick.
SPEAKER_02And uh would you agree that it's I think saying from my perspective, it's it's one of the highlights of the Speak Life term, isn't it? The intensive just I think it is. It's been amazing having people from all sorts of backgrounds interested in different things together in one space, talking about theology and creativity and stuff, and you're like, Oh, actually, lots of people are interested in this stuff. Um yeah, we've had filmmakers and writers and Max Patterson's gonna be there, isn't he?
SPEAKER_00He will very talented taking us through some more uh of the visual storytelling. How does that work? And how have we done you know examples of that work and things like that? Um I think on I when I last checked the list, I think 80% of the people who are on the list, their first name begins with Jay. So just just to qualify what I said before is for anyone whose name begins with J. So it's mostly for people whose names begin with J. There you go. If your name doesn't begin with J, you still come, but know that you'll be in a minority. Uh that's an important thing, just to clarify.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Well, we look forward to that and uh hopefully seeing some of you listeners in person.
SPEAKER_00We'd love to. And then you can get a speak live coffee cup combo. Oh, you can have your own. That's part of your goodie bag when you arrive. How many different combinations do we have? Twenty-seven? Twenty-seven at the moment, might even go up next year. We'll see.
SPEAKER_02Well, thanks, Nate. It's been great to press into this a bit more. If you want to watch the video, anyone listening, and uh have a listen, uh have a watch of Nate's horrific opinions. You can go to youtube.com forward slash at Reform Mythologist.
SPEAKER_00But and don't forget to like and subscribe. That's the thing you're supposed to say, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02So I'll say that. Yeah, and do uh do subscribe to the Speak Life Podcasts on your podcatcher of choice if you haven't done so already. All right, thank you, Nate.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Thomas.
SPEAKER_02We'll see you soon. Bye.