Are we Amusing Ourselves to Death? w/ Nate Morgan Locke

In this episode James and returning guest Nate Morgan Locke explore Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, asking whether his warning still stands, whether he romanticises 19th century America and whether the very invention of the clock as destroyed our sense of the eternal. How does this book affect how Nate makes videos and James makes podcasts.

WARNING: Contains opinions about The Chosen that some listeners may find disappointing. 

Keep track of Nate at: Hero's Creed 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:06

Welcome to the Stand Up Theologian Podcast. My name is James Carey. I am the Stand-Up Theologian of Said Podcast, and here we go again with another episode. I'm basically carrying on this season of podcasts because my brain keeps whirring. I keep thinking of guests to talk to, ideas to discuss that I'm interested in, and if I'm interested in it, I think that you might be too. In this episode, we're talking about amusing ourselves to death, a book from 40 years ago by Neil Postman. It's a bit of a classic when it comes to thinking about media and how it works. I did a zoom chat about this for Loyal Lullabs. That's members of the weekly papers and of supporters of this podcast. And I just wanted to continue the conversation. And so I talked to Nate about amusing ourselves to death. Nate Morganlock, the reformed mythologist, according to YouTube. Welcome back to the Stand-Up Theologian podcast.

SPEAKER_05 1:16

It's great to be back.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

It certainly is. Great to have you. And you were the first person I thought of when I thought I'd like to talk to someone about amusing ourselves to death. And the book. The book. Not the concept or the whole thing. Let's do it, Jake. Let's amuse ourselves to death. And I contacted you because I'd been reading it, because for the loyal lollards, that is the paid members of the Wycliffe Papers that supports this podcast too. We had a little Zoom chat about it. We had a little book group where we read it and then we talked about it. And so if you join the Loyal Lollards, become one of those, then you'll get access to that. But I thought I I want to talk more about this. I've gone all to the bother of rereading it. And so I contacted you and you said something surprising that you were going through it with your son. So why? So firstly, what is this book and why did you think it worthwhile going through it? It's a it's the book is 40 years old and everything's changed since then. So what's going on?

SPEAKER_05 2:27

Part of the reason is because uh we home educate our son and daughter as well, but uh, and so you've got to you've got to go through some books. Yep. And so when we were looking at the sort of spaces in the in the curriculum, uh we needed to have something around this sort of area. Uh and so I was like, oh well that's a that's an obvious one to pick. Um because Mr. Postman, um back in the 1980s, mate, um decided to write about uh the terrifying impact of television.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Had you read it before?

SPEAKER_05 3:04

Yeah, yeah. So I'd read it about four, three, four years ago.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

Okay. Funny enough, I've got the 20th anniversary edition, okay, which is 20 years old. So it's 40 years old. I read it about 20 years ago, and then I came back to it. It's really interesting going back to something because not only has the world changed, you've changed, you're not the same person. So the text is the same, and so you feel about it slightly differently. Yeah, so um what did you so what did you make of it and what what did your conversation look like?

SPEAKER_05 3:36

I loved it, and up so I'm teaching, I was been teaching through it with my son and a couple of other lads his age, so they're sort of teenage boys, and just finding it's really very resonant, very prescient, even for for them, uh, and the particulars of the attention economy that we're in. Yeah, so and I think what I like about it is it's quite a nice introduction for them into uh this type of book where it's going to, you know, it's it's not a kind of hit just a history of something, it's not a um a narrative text, it's not a it's a book that's trying to make an argument and it's pulling from all sorts of different places, and so you're gonna find you'll learn little moments of history and go, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, and then you'll know that, and then you'll think, where did I get that from? And then you'll go, Oh, I think it was actually in that book by Neil Postman. Yeah, so there's a few things like that that I remembered had stuck with me. Um, little kind of snapshots of kind of media studies history in a way, and so I've I wanted to kind of allow them to go through it and and to see it.

SPEAKER_03 4:55

Yeah, so I some I'd imagine a lot of our listeners are aware of it, haven't read it, because most people haven't read most books, and I include my own books in that and my own inability to read enough books. But let's just briefly summarise it. I'll have a quick go and then you can have a dustpan and brush afterwards. So, Postman is arguing that the dominant medium of a culture shapes how people think what they believe is true and how public life functions. So, we're very now focused on the fact that kids can't concentrate because they spent their whole life on phones. Amazingly, I was listening to the Cal Newport podcast, Deep Life, or whatever it's called, where he mentioned an article which says that students who do film studies can't even watch a whole film. Okay, it's not that English literature majors can't read a whole book, which will take you eight, twelve hours. They can't even sit through two hours of a movie. Really interesting. So we tend to think about it in terms of uh sort of our own individual experience of media, but postman's warning is that the change in the nature of mass media changes the rational public discourse, television culture becomes entertainment-driven discourse, the result of which is democracy itself is weakened by amusement rather than by censorship. So this is an Allwell versus Huxley deat match, and postman comes down on the side of Huxley is right, we are amusing ourselves to death, we are not in danger of being oppressed by information being withheld in a censorship form. We are more in danger of being drowned by trivial information which burps out through the television, and you know, and it's not hard to put a straight line between that and the internet and YouTube and podcasts like this, I guess, but maybe we'll get on to that in a bit. So is that a fair summary?

SPEAKER_05 7:14

I think you're absolutely right, and I think the one of the first is the second chapter is media as epistemology, which is this is right your area, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So media as in what the particular medium by which something is presented to you affects the very nature of what you believe to be true. So epistemology is Greek um episteo, episteo is I believe, or believe, yeah, and then ology, obviously, the study of. So the study of how we believe. So the dominant factor in our even conception of what is true, Postman's arguing is based upon the medium, and you could say, well, Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message, uh, is actually the the significance of the medium that something is uh delivered in um for its its own truth and credibility.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

So Postman acknowledges Marshall McLuhan because McLuhan's I think it's called understanding media, and I think it is on my bookshelf behind me somewhere. Um he is the guy in the 60s, I think, who says the media is the message, and um and I think Postman says the medium is the metaphor, so he kind of tweaks it, but broadly speaking, but what I thought is so interesting about it I mean, well, firstly, I would agree because this is an audio podcast, it is not a YouTube video. The stand-up theologian podcast is not on YouTube because the rules of YouTube are completely different, and the moment something is on YouTube, you have to front-load it with the grabby, grabby, listen to me, listen to me thing, as opposed to a podcast where people have sort of decided to listen to it. Um they've they've only they've bet they've they've found it and they've listened to lots of episodes because you can't find podcasts, the discoverability is still a complete disaster, so you're you tend to have a much deeper relationship with an audience who have already decided um to listen to you. So I'm very grateful to listeners who've done that. But it's so much more fundamental than that. And postman goes back almost to the second commandment and graven images that the Lord seemed to understand this. But the bit I thought was really helpful is this quote about clocks. He he refers back to a guy called Mumford, who's written a book sort of before him in the 30s, I think. Yeah, because it ironically it was monks that invented clocks so that they could pray at regular intervals throughout the day. And so he says this the clock made us into timekeepers and then time savers, and now time servers. In the process, we have learned irrelevance toward the sun and the seasons, for in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is superseded. Indeed, as Mumford points out, with the invention of the clock, eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events. Thus, though few would have imagined the connection, the inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the weakening of God's supremacy than all the treatises produced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. That is to say, the clock introduced a new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to have been the loser. Perhaps Moses should have included another commandment, thou shalt not make mechanical representations of time. Wow. I mean that's that's astonishing, isn't it? The guy's not a Christian, by the way. I think he's as a secular uh Jew, I think, or something like that, but not a sort of Judeo-Christian American 80s, but not a Christian believer. But that is an astonishing insight, isn't it?

SPEAKER_05 11:10

Yeah, so I think the yeah, the clock thing. What's great about, and as I say, the reason why I wanted my son to read it and to study it with him, is that sort of a thought is it's just really brilliant. It's a level of thinking that I don't think most of us most of the time are thinking are operating on. And it whether you agree with you know as how far Postman's gonna go with it, because obviously he's very kind of strongly kind of um opinionated on a lot of this stuff, it is genuinely fascinating the difference that clocks have made to our perception of what you can do in a day or what's possible or what what time is, what a human life is. So I yeah, I I I really value the the question. Um and do think the post-Mazon to something, in the sense that yeah, this is we don't almost aren't aware of how conditioned we are by those technologies, yeah. And we're probably much more conscious of how conditioned we are by media consumption or the particular media that we we consume, but less so by just the simple presence of clocks because it's explained as being, well, this is just what the time is, this is just how it works, but of course it is having an impact.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

Yeah. I also note well, a couple of things. I mean, one is therefore the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is surely one of the most influential books in human history in terms of the British Empire, is built on Christianity, and that Christianity informed by millions of people saying every Sunday the same words, uh doing the same thing, being catechised in that way. And I think it's the catechesis that's interesting, which is essentially a poshword for teaching, discipling, uh, the secular version would be brainwashing. So there's a whole piece around that which I think we're only now really beginning to realise that we need things to do and say regularly to teach ourselves rather than having to pull original words out of the air ex tempore every time we pray. But also, this puts into words the reason why I don't watch the chosen and why I'm not a fan of the chosen, is because although I'm okay with it not being a second commandment violation, so can can you represent Jesus on screen? I would say it's unwise, uh, I don't think it's a sin necessarily, but it might be, and I don't want to do it, okay, and I'm not doing it. Yeah, the problem with the chosen is not that it's a bad representation of Jesus, the fact is it's a very convincing representation of Jesus and the Gospels with high production values, and everybody loves it, and everyone says how good it is, and that for an entire generation is going to have an enormous uh tail in the popular imagination of perceptions of Jesus for decades because they they they may not have read the gospels or they have, but they saw the chosen, and the chosen is faithful to scripture in many ways, and the guys writing it are doing a good job in terms of they're trying to triangulate between four gospels or that kind of stuff, but that's not what the Bible says.

SPEAKER_05 14:51

Yeah, and it's also and is it also isn't the the medium that we've been given. No, which is probably you know, it ought to be the more probably the more dominant factor is the fac is you know, if God had wanted to build up his people using images or moving images, or moving images with sound, like he could have done that, and whereas actually he chose to fulfil the old testament in the time of the New Testament and in the time of the writing, and so you know, he's got postman talks about these revolutions in in media where you go from the oral tradition to actually the written word, and then you go from um the written word to the printing press, and then you go from the um from that to get the photograph, and then of course moving into to film and television. So there's been a an obvious movement, progression, whatever you want to call it, in terms of our technological abilities to convey information. God chose to reveal himself at a time when most of those weren't available. Yeah. And that I think there's a there's a reason for that. And I don't I agree with you that um I don't think that the chosen is by necessity a second commandment violation. But the issue is if someone is watching those, is watching the chosen, and you know, you may get huge benefit from it, and I've been sort of hauled over the call the coals a few times for not having watched it. I was speaking at a an event and talking about Christianity and the arts, and this lady came up to me at the end. Uh no, this lady asked me a question about the the chosen. She said, You watch it, and I slightly cheekily just said, I prefer the book. And then at the end of that, she kind of came up to me as people are stacking away the chairs and tables, and she really was quite cross that I hadn't actively encouraged people to watch The Chosen. Oh, she's like, This is an amazing opportunity evangelistically, and for someone like you who's speaking on Christianity and the arts and culture and so on, not to give it a full-throated yes and amen, hallelujah, everyone should go and watch it, is effectively dampening the work of evangelism, and even just like so the phrase I use on the Reform Mythology's YouTube channel a lot is media consumption is optional.

SPEAKER_04 17:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:25

And almost the on something like the chosen feels like you can't no, but this isn't this is about Jesus. I'm like, yeah, I know it's about Jesus, still optional because there's no you know commandment that thou must watch the chosen. So I'm not like it's not just hey, Nate's a bit of a natural contrarian, and so he doesn't want to enjoy what everyone else is enjoying. I think one of the issues I would say with people who are really kind of into it is to say, right, watch 15 other film or television representations of Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:01

Because I think once you've got into that, you can start to actually it will shape your understanding of the gospel, like by necessity. I think Postman's right on that, the medium or the media as epistemology. I think it it's it will have an impact. That's why you enjoy watching it so much, is because you're finding it so resonant, yeah, and there's something you're taking into that. So yeah, anyway, all that to say, I think that yeah, I don't think it's it's a second commandment violation, but I do think there's something significant about the difference between like the image perceived with the eye and the word heard with the ear. So I think there are perception, verbs are perception in scripture and and how they affect us. I think that's that's worth attention as well.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Yeah, and it's also the framing, really, isn't it? Because uh, you you firsthand have witnessed me perform made-up scripture. So I write fake parables of that that Peter told because he wants to have a crack at telling a parable because you know doesn't it that hard, and it kind of gets it gets away from him fairly fast. So I have stuff that I do as comedy, which is normally preceded by early manuscripts do not include the following. Yeah, and at the end I say, This is not the word of the Lord, thanks be to God. So I'm clearly bracketing this off as nonsense, speculative, um hopefully to amuse and enlighten in a particular way. So there that's pretty clearly labelled parody. But the problem is the chosen is a inadverted commerce faithful version of the Christian of the Jesus narrative, but the the one episode I watched where Jesus meets Nicodemus, they changed it. Right. They so firstly they gave Nicodemus a backstory that he doesn't have in scripture. Well, okay, that's okay, but you've changed it, yeah, and then the order in which things are said in the conversation, which only appears once in the Bible in John, they've changed that too. And at one point, Nicodemus says, Oh, I should worship you, and Jesus says, Oh, no, no, no, no, don't do that. What? Okay, that's like so. I mean, I think that's wrong, you know. So I think that's a poor adaptation of that particular scene, but they've made some artistic choices for reasons as a screenwriter. I a thousand percent understand because they're trying to cobble together a whole load of stuff and not kind of business. It looks great, it's well acted, you know. People love it, and I'm not saying they shouldn't love it because it's easy to love, because it also looks like proper telly like the non-Christians have. Um, and so it's something to be proud of as a cultural technological uh achievement in that sense. So I I I get it, and uh, the people who are doing it are meaning well, but if you see that scene, when you go back to read John's gospel, you'll go, Oh, I take it God is happy with how it's written in scripture. No notes. If you've confused that, then I think I don't think you're doing someone a great service if you've sort of passed it off as the real thing. So that is one thing that we've already enraged probably uh 60% of my audience, because we we imbibe these things without thinking, and going back to Postman's book, on a very basic level, he talks about the telegraph. So you can immediately send messages, and he says, Yes, except immediately it's so even at the time, I think, or I can't remember the quote, but he says something like Rather than it taking three months, we're now going to know much quicker that uh Princess Adelaide has got hooping. Off this is not helping us. Then the newspapers become more salacious. They then have photographs and images and public discourse is compromised. And then he sort of quite memorably talks about how elections, hustings, you have political candidates speaking for one and a half, two, three hours, and everyone being sent home to have dinner and then come back. And so here's my question to you. Well, it's just possible that this conversation has enraged you because you are a chosen fan. In which case, why don't you go onto Facebook if you are on Facebook and join the group chat where we sometimes talk about these episodes? That would be a good place to go and do that. There's a link to that in the show notes. You could send me an email via the Weeklift Papers. If you subscribe to the Weeklift Papers, you can just reply to one of the newsletters and I see it that way. There might be some kind of fan mail facility. I'll try to put a link to that as well, Vins. You can type me a message on your phone if you're listening to this on a phone, which uh most of you probably are. So that is how to get in touch with us me about the chosen, which I do realise makes some people go slightly deranged and that my view seems contrary and annoying. But I'd like to hear it. You could also get hold of the Zoom chat about this book if you're enjoying what Nate and I are talking about, where we talk about different things and other things. I talk about, for example, the QI fication of knowledge, and uh other members of the Loyal Lollards are uh have their own insights as well. It's really interesting. So if you join the Wycliffe Papers, become a paid subscriber, you can get access to that. I'm gonna stop wibbling, let's get back to the conversation. And that question I had for Nate. Nat here's so here's my question to you. Do you think he has an overly romanticized view of what he calls the typographic culture, which is in chapter three, that they could follow long arguments, think with um, you know, tolerate complexity, think analytically, engage seriously in politics, or do you think I think some of them probably didn't really understand what they were hearing, um, and there wasn't really anything else to do?

SPEAKER_05 24:28

Yeah, I I take the point that uh he might be um overly romanticized about it, and maybe he could because he's so um strident with what he's saying, then he might be dismissed and then people might not take him seriously. I'm not sure you can really um argue against the idea that uh the United States of America in its first I don't know hundred years of official existence, or 200 years, is one of the most literate and literary nations that there's ever been. So just even just and I think this what there's a lot of what Postman's writing about, which is quite specific to the cultural moments of America, yeah, and he's obviously thinking about it um in the 1980s. But the fact that the people who get across to America are people are religious people, people of the book, and that they're very quickly establishing a kind of book culture, and and that there are there is you know, in the context of the telegraph, which he's talking about in the 19th century, that the novel is the novel thing, right? So he talks about um Charles Dickens doing his tours and he's basically just like the gr biggest celebrity of all time. And he would not be that if it weren't for the fact that uh people having access to literature and books was uh what people had easy access to those things. So I think that his his argument for like typographical America and saying that this is a particular um this this media or this medium had shaped their minds and because of the nature of the media that was that was being consumed, it they were capable of engaging with much more complex ideas and sitting with them for longer I I think that's hard to to disagree with. So I I wonder whether those you know, Lincoln Douglas debates, you know, just prior to the American Civil War are a very peculiar moment in world history rather than hey, everything was just better in the past and now it's all gone terribly. I think there is something quite quite unique about that time, and because America because he's writing as an American in America in the eight 1980s, he's looking back on that as you know, it's 150 years ago, and from what great height have we fallen, America? So I I go with his argument there. I I do think he maybe overstates it to the point that people might dismiss him, but I genuinely think the reason the book has staying power is because he's on to something.

SPEAKER_03 27:22

Yes, he gives the impression that it sounds like he's saying that this is how this is how society should be. This is the primary version and it's all downhill from here. But actually, I think he's saying this is the effect of a responsible print-based culture. Yeah. I take it that even if Abraham Lincoln was running for president and speaking, he was using rhetorical skills in order to emotionally engage with the audience. So I think we might mistakenly think these are rational people who are dealing in rational facts and philosophical political principles, and therefore they're able to vote according to extremely kind of um objective criteria. And you think, well, no, that's that's not the case. It has never been the case because, and I should be on commission for the book, uh, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt is very convincing in how it says you make up your mind emotionally, and no matter how clever you are, you're still doing it. In fact, the cleverer you are, the more deluded you are that you have emotionally made up your mind because your intellect backfills your reason incredibly quickly. Yeah. So you can believe that your cause isn't just just but factually correct.

SPEAKER_05 28:42

Yeah, yeah. And I think that argument against Postman is he too reliant on a kind of enlightenment rationalism to think that there is just the facts, the brute facts, and nothing but the facts, is probably misguided. I mean, so one of the quotes um quotations, sorry, I often use when I'm um uh teaching on uh stuff at Speak Life in the Intensives and and talking about culture and and evangelism. So Ashley Null, who is a historian, wrote of Thomas Cranmer's anthropology that uh he summed up Thomas Cranmer, who wrote the prayer book, um his anthropology was summed up as what the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. So it's heart to will to mind, and so you're post-rationalizing what you want to be true, and then the easy thing you show people there is you just say, Well, when you're doom scrolling on your phone, that you know you shouldn't really be doing anyway, when you see a headline that agrees with your priors, you go, Well, that's probably true. Yeah, uh, I'm yeah, I'm sure, as I thought. And the bar for kind of you know credibility drops right down. When you see one that goes against what you currently think, you think, Oh, I'm sure there's more to that. I'm sure there's more going on there. And so you raise the bar for what you know the argument needs to do. So I do think that would be a very valid critique of Postman to say that he is perhaps overly optimistic about this kind of idea of rational human beings who are who have always made or at a point in American history were making decisions much more rationally than the kind of you know desperately emotionally incontinent people he finds in 1985.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Yes. That takes us on to we say chapters four, five, and six, the peekaboo world, the age of show business, and now this, which I'll I see very much as one piece really about attention span, uh joined up information, which is not information but actually an argument or a context. The thing that's missing here, which would be different if it were a book written by C.S. Lewis, and there's and I do feel this book is quite C. S. Lewis-like in terms of it's talking about complicated things extremely simply and very engagingly, and he's very happy to state himself clearly and pick a team and pick a view rather than on the one hand this, on the other hand that. And so his lack of understanding of human nature, I think, is a problem because essentially what he doesn't really ever ask is why do we keep doing this? It's not just a naivety about the effect that a new form of technology might have, which, for example, we're now realizing that giving phones to kids was a complete disaster, and now there is a block of people whose minds have probably been permanently damaged or altered in some way, um, which is probably irreversible. So we're very quick to say, oh, this is great, what's the harm? The chosen is brilliant. Why aren't you using this as an evangelistic tool? Not realizing in 20 years' time people were gonna think that guy is actually Jesus and he's not, but we very quickly adopt something, and I think that's a good thing to note. But what postman doesn't really understand is why are we happy to do that? Why do we want context-free information? Why do we scroll so that we can get that? I mean, it's it can't just be dopamine. I don't think he talks much about dopamine, it's quite a big thing to talk about now. No, that I think that is probably what's missing. I don't think he should have had it in the book necessarily. I don't think I'm not cross with him that he didn't have this insight because I think his insight here does have is is already very helpful.

SPEAKER_05 32:48

And the thing about him in those chapters, Peekaboo World, etc., talking about decontextualized information. So there's a level at which he won by the time he gets to um now this, which is I think one of my favorite chapters in the book, I think you that stands alone quite well. So if people are like, Oh, uh you know, do I have to read it? If you are able to get hold of just now this, I think it's quite a fascinating little um snippet. But uh he's talking there about the the fact that you're being bounced with in the modern news as he's talking about in 1985, a bunch lots of context-free information in little bite-sized pieces one after another that don't seem to follow on, which is where the kind of now this thing comes in. Stop thinking about that, think about this. All right, stop thinking about that, think about this. Yeah, and I think we all recognize that within you know the most successful attempt to harvest human information the world has ever seen, which is the scrollable vertical video.

SPEAKER_04 33:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 33:52

Um, none of these videos are connected to each other, yeah. But what I really like, and I've used a few times to try to kind of open up the topic of media attention economy or media consumption, is when he starts to define what decontextualized information is, but in and of itself. So he argues that uh with the invention of the telegraph, you can pass information very quickly over hundreds of miles. And he says this is relevant because there is something I don't know whether he came up with this, but certainly I quote him as talking about it the information-action ratio. So there is information you receive, and then there are actions you perform off the back of that information. And if you have a good balance between the information you're receiving and the action you're performing, you're recognizing the input that's coming into you and your own personal activity are reasonably well balanced. So he says, one thing, if I read in the you know, here on the radio, it's gonna rain tomorrow morning, I can take action, I can get my coat when I leave the house or whatever it might be, or I put my umbrella in my bag because I'll be, you know, needing it tomorrow. Um if you find out that it's gonna rain 300 miles away, I think Baltimore to Washington is the example he gives, you're not gonna do anything with that information. It's just gonna sit there in your brain. Oh, no. Now, there's nothing wrong with knowing things necessarily that you don't do something with, right? There is there is something about education which can accumulate a bunch of uh a bunch of facts and information, however, when you are drowning in decontextualized information that leaves you without activity to perform, you feel impotent. You are now powerless in the world because there's all this stuff what's happening, and you can't do a single thing about it. And so you just you basically just feel useless, and because you feel useless, you actually then consume more of the media because at least if you're being entertained by this, you know, doom scrolling or whatever it might be, um, at least that's taking your mind off the fact that you personally have very little agency. So that that I think for people uh is really sorry, I just too in the microphone there. Um that for people is really quite uh uh uh helpful to think through their own consumption of media or information. What do I consume that actually makes a difference in my life today? And what am I just consuming?

SPEAKER_03 36:47

Yeah, I think people still get unnerved when I say I don't follow the news. Um and I I sort of actively don't follow the news. And I think people thought that it is your job as a responsible citizen to be informed and to watch the news. Yeah. And I mean Postman again does a fairly good job of stuff that I mean, relatively obvious things that probably didn't seem obvious at the time, which is no matter what happens, the news always seems to take about 29 minutes. And he has quite a funny borderline rant about why is there a theme tune? Why does the news have a theme tune?

SPEAKER_02 37:24

The headlines tonight bottomly refreshed after three days on cross random clockwork done across his Atlantic floor and snack chimney sweep up full of menade.

SPEAKER_03 38:05

Welcome! And I tell you what, the day when the news doesn't have a theme tune, that's the scary news. There's a click and there's a new cast newscaster, and you think either the king has died or we're about to be attacked by the Russians. Yeah, yeah. So uh that I thought that was very funny. And of course, the likes of The Day Today and Chris Morris did funny things about this, with particularly with news and the rolling news, and Charlie Brooker has done a load of stuff on news as well, which is really, really good. So it does seem obvious, but no matter how obvious it is and how uninformative the news is, yeah, you really you discover. So, for example, when all the recent Nor stories about Prince Andrew, the artist, the prince, formerly known as Prince Andrew, um came out, there's no there's no new information on that. And so you've got people talking and commenting and commenting and talking and talking and talking about not really anything at all, and so there's nothing to say, I can't do anything about it. They're not elected, so I can't not vote for them next time around. So what am I supposed to do with this information? So I think people think, well, you need to be informed, but I would say I don't particularly want to be loaded up with stuff that I'm not interested in, I don't care about it, doesn't affect me, it affects others, but then again, there are billions of people in the world, so I probably can't get around everyone. So what why? And but I think people do think that that's oh, you're kind of being isolationist, or you're it's like, well, not really, it's just this constant stream of news turns out to not be important.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

This TVS evening news, this is their theme. That's how to mean that. And now time puppies will lick your face.

SPEAKER_05 40:09

So last week I was speaking at the University Events Week for the whole week, and the lunchtime talks that we were doing, the best talk title that I think we came up with was on the for the talk on suffering, and it was got Does God Not Watch the News? And I was like, actually, that's really good, right? So then I'm starting off and I'm like, okay, let's talk about the news a bit. And I'm pulling stuff from postman, and I'm saying, okay, this is the information action ratio, and this is why you're feeling burdened by all sorts of stuff that's happening in the world. And then we talked about how you can't you can't put the charge of not caring about suffering at the at the feet which are pierced by nails.

SPEAKER_03 40:50

Wow, that's great stuff.

SPEAKER_05 40:51

The suffering servant is our God, you know, he is, you know, we worship him, the Lamb that was slain. Um, anyway, off the back of that, I had a few great conversations about Jesus off the back of it, but the most emotionally engaged conversations I had, and I use that phrase um advisedly, were from Christian students who were outraged that I was telling them that scrolling international politics wasn't doing them any good and wasn't really their thing.

unknown 41:29

Right.

SPEAKER_05 41:30

Because they were talking about how devastated they were, you know, when Donald Trump got re-elected in 2024, whatever it was. And I said, Oh, are you from the States? And they're like, Um, well, no. Oh, do you have family there? No, not really. So you're okay. And I just said, Right, Donald Trump is none of your business. And I was, you know, I I knew that that was a slightly, you know, I mean, we're in a kind of you know, it's a fairly progressive city, Bristol. So they were a bit sort of concerned about I was on the you know, I was being a bit too irrascible. They're like, no, but uh but no, but it's like this is this has an impact. And I'm like, but you're worried about it in a way that is totally disproportionate to its impact on your actual life. Yeah, that you like don't let the orange man into your bedroom, right? Yeah, he like here there's no need for that. Yeah, and so it was just trying to can can talk to these um these young ladies to sort of say this isn't the thing you need to worry about at the moment. You've got a huge amount of like energy and gifting and talent and time, and you can use that in a way that will make a difference in people's lives because you are concerned about the suffering of the world, but all that will happen if you just sit there scrolling away is that you'll be so consumed by your own magnificent empathy for the people who are suffering so abominably at the hand of these you know terrible people that you will be consumed by this and it's addictive, and you're gonna get kind of caught up into it. So that was really fascinating for me. Just about okay, here is how the media is you know so dominant in someone's life.

SPEAKER_03 43:22

Had they really not thought that this constant diet of news was bad for them, you know, because clearly they would probably say, Oh, yeah, I look at my phone too much, but why and why is it doing you harm? Was there no real introspection about it?

SPEAKER_05 43:33

I think I think there was a little bit of that. So there was there was a sense of kind of like that you're bringing some new ideas, which are you know, it's strange. But I was talking about John Paul Sott. Wow. This is this is why you earn the big bucks, right? This is it, right? I only know one quote from him, and that is hell it is other people. And you're like, oh, okay, just didn't like people. That's kind of his thing. Existentialist misery guts, you know. Not not a people pleaser or people person. But actually, it was the reason why he says that is because the existence of other people means the existence of other people who perceive and judge him.

SPEAKER_04 44:14

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:15

And he wants to be the person who does the perceiving and the judging. He wants to be the one who's looking and deciding what's right and wrong and all that sort of stuff. And so my argument with these students was basically to say part of the reason why we love it so much, even when it makes us so depressed because everything's so awful, is that we decide who the goodies and baddies are. Like we know what's right and wrong in this situation. That's right and that's wrong. Look how terrible this is. And it's been given to us at such a rate with the algorithm and you know, we're consuming it so so quickly that it basically is embedding our own self-righteousness and our own like brilliance for have being so sad at what's happening to all these other people, yeah. And you know, our own kind of desire to take on the suffering of the world, which it means just the distortion of a good thing in lots of ways, but it's also the kind of you know embedding us in this sense of our own moral superiority and our own our own goodness in the face of such a terrible a terrible world we're in.

SPEAKER_03 45:24

Yeah, yeah, no, that's fascinating. There's probably a lot more we could talk about on this, but I'm keen to to wrap this up fairly soon. So you're a YouTuber. Why don't you wrap up by just talking about how re-going through this book again has made you think how you go about doing you because you know YouTube is brilliant, I love YouTube, and frankly, if I lived on my own, I probably wouldn't even bother with Netflix, I would just pay for YouTube and watch people talking about ideas pretty much, and then I'd scroll Instagram to watch funny sketches because all of the comedy now, short form comedy, is on Instagram. It might be on TikTok too, but I don't know, I don't have that, and I don't know why you would want that. But YouTube is brilliant and they they do certain things extremely well. So I I've watched videos that last two hours on on YouTube that could have been audio, frankly. And and the other thing is, and this is why your videos are so are so good, because they are based on how people perceive media now. Because I think what's incredible about Instagram reels, you flick a reel within a microsecond, you know exactly what kind of video this is. Yeah, you immediately know, oh, this is a guy and his daughter who lip sync to 80s songs. Yeah, great. 30 seconds, that's pretty much it. Next one, this is two ladies dancing in their garage who became friends, the shuffle mamas or whatever. Okay, great. Next thing. Oh, this is someone doing a sketch where they're playing both parts and it's about the English language. Okay, great. And I'm saying a lot more about my own feed than anything else. Um, this is an older woman basically telling off young feminists that their attitudes towards life are completely unreasonable. Okay, this is a homeschooling mum just sharing something that she's just heard someone else say and blah, blah, blah. Okay, this is a clip from Brooklyn 99. Okay, this is something that's news related from a sitcom from 30 years ago, which is strangely prescient and it's got a thing. And so bang, bang, bang, you know exactly what it is every time you flick. Oh, this is a guy doing impressions. I flippin' love impressions.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Trump always looks like he just bumped into an ex-girlfriend, he's so defensive. He's like me, I'm doing so well. You unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

Me, I have so many friends. More friends than probably anybody. I have more friends than I'm cycling now, I'm doing peloton.

SPEAKER_03 47:58

But but what that means, and again, when you read scripture, everything is hyperlinked. So when something happens in the New Testament, you go, Oh, this is exactly like that bit in Genesis, which then kind of comes back in 1 Samuel, and there's a reference to it in Isaiah, and there's probably a bit in Habakkuk, but I've not really read that if I'm honest. All of these things crunch in on this thing, yeah, and you know, it's memes. Bible is memes, and so in a way, I think this understanding is really helpful because it makes the Bible richer because we see stuff, but obviously, you're making fast YouTube videos, but are also essays as well, and thoughts and that kind of stuff. So, how is how has this book going over it again affected how you go about your craft?

SPEAKER_05 48:47

It raises some quite awkward problems.

SPEAKER_03 48:51

Uh yeah, good night, everyone.

SPEAKER_05 48:53

Yeah, is my life just a contradiction? I feel the tension of creating content or media for a particular platform quite keenly. Yeah. So I know some people are just like, this is an opportunity to get the gospel out there and let's just use the thing and you know, just whichever tell people to watch the shows, and yeah, whatever nudges the platform is giving me to make content in a particular kind of way, it's just follow those because you know that's gonna get us a bigger, a bigger viewership. I am conscious of that, and so and I'm also conscious of the fact that algorithms reward uh a long obedience in the same direction.

SPEAKER_04 49:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 49:37

So you just need to make the same content about the same thing so that we can serve it up to similar groups of people, and they'll go, Great, I know what this is, exactly as you're saying with those like um Instagram reels or something. And so that for partly for me, again, maybe that's just because I have a contrarian, but I'm like, I don't want to just make reaction videos to cartoons that have feature demons. We made some videos like that and engaged an audience there, and it's like, oh, the season two's coming out. You're gonna make some videos, you know, on the season two. I'm like, I don't want to watch season two because I didn't really enjoy season what like and so I want to talk about Malcolm Geit's defense of smoking a pipe and drinking beer. So the algorithm's saying, what what no one who was watching those videos cares about that video?

SPEAKER_03 50:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The algorithm's gonna get very confused.

SPEAKER_05 50:31

Exactly. So I'm basically doing it wrong, is the main thing. But what I've always had a fascination with in any form of communication or media or creative work is the craft, and that's more about okay, so what is involved in making this particular thing? Why is a book a book and why is a film a film and why is a podcast a podcast day? What is it that you're doing in that particular medium? And how do we so quickly become literate in that medium as the audience? And I just find that whole thing incredibly, incredibly fascinating, and so when I feel like I'm being, you know, kind of coerced or manipulated by the platform to make content in a particular way so it reaches more people, there's something about me which just wants to take a step back and go, oh, that's interesting. I don't really want to do that, but uh you know, here we go. So there are opportunities that you can have to genuinely connect with groups of people and build relationships with them that comes about through social media that I'm really interested in. So, you know, for something like this, your podcast, you're not just putting out content and saying, Hey everyone in the world, I'd love you to see it. It's like there's a group of people who've already commit to it and you're invested in that and invested in them.

SPEAKER_03 51:56

Yeah, no, it's there's there's a lot more to be said on that because all of these different platforms reward different forms of behaviour, and there are ways of engaging with them that's positive, that's that's works with the medium for the kind of audience that's on there. So the Instagram audience is very different from the YouTube audience, which is very different from people who read Substacks, which is very different from people who look at Facebook, and they all have their uses and they can be used. But I think quite often you're told when you look into this world that you should clip stuff for all the different mediums and all that kind of stuff, and it's and you need to be everywhere. It's like, well, you can't be, and the content you make just won't work on different platforms, so I I wouldn't really bother. And then also I think you often forget how you consume things when you're making stuff, you've forgotten the fact. So if you make a YouTube video, yeah, you are very you can see when people stop watching, and the analytics are hard to watch because you think, wow, a lot of people just bailed how many per what percentage of people made it all the way to the end of this video that took me ages? Yeah, that sucks. Oh, interesting. Do you watch every video to the end? Yeah, well, no, yeah, okay, yeah. So uh just just paying attention to what you're paying attention to will will do quite a lot anyway. Much more to be said, and we will be talking in person at the Keswick Unconventional, which is the third week of the Keswick Convention 2026. But you probably can't wait till then, dear listeners. So I would urge you to go over to the Reform Mythology's YouTube channel. And where else can people go, Nate?

SPEAKER_05 53:33

Oh, the other place, probably the better place to go, just to if you want to keep up to date, is to go to heroescreed.com uh and to join the email list there, which is basically I want to use the Apostles' Creed and the Heroes' Journey to tell the story and teach the faith. So I want to help people to have a better understanding of the gospel as they consider uh how it's been summed up for us in the Apostles' Creed, and so that is probably the best place to go, and that way I can keep people sort of up to date with all the other stuff that uh I'll be doing over the coming months.

SPEAKER_03 54:15

Nate has finally learned the value of the mailing list because it's not controlled by an algorithm. Yeah, good old-fashioned email. So thanks very much, Nate, for joining us. Thank you for having me. And thanks for listening, everyone, and I will speak to you next time. Cheerio. Ta-ta-by. Thanks for listening. We're running long now, aren't we? So I'm just gonna keep it short and say thanks very much. In order to sustain this podcast, I'd like to spend slightly less time editing, and I just couldn't really work out where to make the cuts here. So I've left it pretty much all in. I've just removed a little bit of repetition. Anyway, let me know what you think about it being a bit longer. Do all that over at the Facebook group or contact me for my fan mail, link to that in the show notes, and you can send me a message on your phone. Why don't you try that? Oh man, more media. What is the message and the metaphysics and the metaphor of that media? Although I don't know. Until next time, is this how it ends? Yep.