Postmodern Realities Podcast

In 2001, Spirited Away became the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time. Twenty years later, in the midst of the pandemic, another Japanese release emerged and toppled Spirited Away’s box office record. This film wasn’t a critical darling or the work of an esteemed auteur. It wasn’t even a standalone film. It was a transitional installment of the anime series Demon Slayer (2019–), fitting rig...

This episode focuses on the sad but triumphant tale of the martyrdom of Polycarp. Well-named was our beloved Bishop of Smyrna; “much fruit” is what his name means in Greek, and he has done just that, both in his ministry to the church and in the glorious manner of his death. There are some who claim that Polycarp harbored a death wish, but nothing could be further from the truth. When he was advis...

In many ways, Andor is anti-Star Wars—and not in the same sense that many seem to think Rian Johnson’s 2017 sequel, The Last Jedi, is anti-Star Wars. That film is subversive, sure, but Andor, by comparison, seems downright heretical. Gone is the clear sense of good and evil that defines the moral compass of the films. Gone are even passing references to the Jedi or the Sith. Forget the will of the...

This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Jonah Haddad about his online-exclusive article, “Wagering with Jesus and Pascal: Two Prudential Offers for Christian Belief”. https://www.equip.org/articles/wagering-with-jesus-and-pascal-two-prudential-offers-for-christian-belief/ Locked articles are online exclusive content that are only available to subscribers. There are...

This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with JOURNAL author Anne Kennedy about her online-exclusive article, “Take Joy: Santa, St. Nicholas, and Jesus”. https://www.equip.org/articles/take-joy-santa-st-nicholas-and-jesus/ Locked articles are online exclusive content that are only available to subscribers. There are three subscription options to access our online exclusive content. 1. S...

Netflix’s Ozark while dealing with the very dark themes of drug trafficking and murder, is a show that can help the Christian apologist intersect with its depiction of culture and family and use those themes as a springboard to contrast it with the truth of Christianity. ***Warning Ozark Season One and Two (SE E2) contain nudity, sexual situations, graphic violence, and language. All seasons (1-4)...

In November of 2017, Amazon secured the rights for The Lord of the Rings from the Tolkien estate, promising to resurrect the dormant series and adhere even more faithfully to Tolkien’s source material, even bringing in Tolkien’s grandson, Simon, during the development process. The culmination of Amazon’s acquisition of the prestigious property arrived in September 2022 as the first episodes of a p...

Wesley Hill in his book, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian, poses the following question, “Perhaps celibate gay and lesbian Christians, precisely in and out of their celibacy, are called to express, rather than simply renounce and deny, same-sex love. And perhaps this is where, for all the potential trials and temptations that come with this way of thinki...

Millennials and Gen Z increasingly reject biblical sexuality, and they aren’t shy about saying why. For American evangelical millennials (ages 26 to 41), specifically, the shift happened at least in part with ‘90s purity culture, which shouldn’t be a shock. Many were blindsided by tyrannical youth pastors wielding half-eaten lollipops, chewed gum, flowers without petals — symbolic, they said, of b...

Understanding how tarot works can help us see why it might be attractive to some for divination and self-awareness. To see the cards is to see yourself. Tarot decks are made up of seventy-eight cards divided into two sections, the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. Arcana is Latin for “secrets” or “mysteries.” Think of the tarot as unlocking the mysteries of life. The Major Arcana is comprised of...

In some parts of the world, demonology has been overemphasized; however, the Western world seems to be dealing with the opposite end of the spectrum. Naturalistic materialism has brought with it the notion that passages in Scripture describing demonic activity —especially in the Gospels— ought to be understood as a primitive society reacting to cases of mental illness, unknown to them at the time....

One of the best-reviewed shows currently streaming features a seminary student who takes hallucinogens to receive visions from God (I must have missed that class during my own seminary stint) and a succubus demon that wears a retainer. This kind of absurd, off-beat humor has come to define Robert and Michelle King’s CBS supernatural procedural Evil, which only recently concluded its third season o...

Marriage has been around almost as long as the romantic kind, but it was recently rediscovered as a “radical,” even courageous choice in the post-Obergefell v. Hodges era when same-sex couples received the legal right to marry. Like other trending topics, it has its own hashtag leading to tweets like: “can we normalize platonic marriage pls i would love to spend the rest of my life with people tha...

The science fiction television series Raised by Wolves (HBO Max) draws on this ancient story, while moving the myth into uncanny, alien territory. This time the “Mother of all the Living” (Gen. 3:20) isn’t an innocent woman in communion with God at humanity’s beginning: she is an android programmed with a naive atheism, living at a time when humanity has almost reached its end. Created by Aaron Gu...

Christians weary of the tumultuous debates over human sexuality sometimes wonder whether such a divisive conflict is necessary. After all, many of those promoting arguments in favor of affirming sexual relationships outside of traditional marriage also affirm the Trinity, the full deity and humanity of Christ, and confess Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. Why shouldn’t they be recognized as...

Catchy beats, wild camera angles, and hipsters talking about Tarot cards, crystals, and astrology. Just your average day on TikTok’s #witchtok. The hashtag has more than twenty-seven billion views. If you were to scroll through TikTok for a few hours, you’d maybe start to believe that witchcraft is cool. Witchcraft is alive and well, even among Christians. There are astrology apps where you can ac...

Transhumanists desire to create a utopia of their own design through science and technology. Though clothed in technical language, a strong religious undercurrent buoys this deceptive philosophical movement. As societies around the world become increasingly secular, transhumanism represents an eschatological source of hope, purpose, and destiny — an alluring competitor to the gospel. This Postmode...

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the best thing to happen to Star Trek in a long time, standing as a testament to what a little inspired casting and the power of social media can do. When Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, and Rebecca Romijn stepped into the respective roles of Christopher Pike, Spock, and the enigmatic Number One during the second season of Star Trek: Discovery back in 2019, the notion of...

How could a popular podcaster and author produce a feature film and write a book with the title “What is a Woman?” Does not everyone know the answer to that? After all, humanity is a dimorphic species, consisting of males and females, each with its own distinctive DNA (XY or XX) and gametes (sperm or egg). .... When Walsh asks Dr. Michelle Focier, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and an Assistant...

In the medieval Christian tradition, one form of travel—pilgrimage—functioned as a spiritual discipline in which the act of walking prefigured the soul’s movement from spiritual death to life with God. Indeed, at the roots of Christian story is the pilgrimage of Abraham, who leaves his country to wander in search of another. Today, pilgrimage functions primarily as a metaphor, reminding us that we...

Shaun of the Dead, and most zombie movies, bring home the truth that such stories often tell. They often portray civilized life as damning and even deadening. (It’s notable that Night of the Living Dead begins in a graveyard. It’s notable that the zombies in both versions of Dawn of the Dead shamble to the shopping mall.) The civilization zombies destroy is already infected. The stories we tell ab...

Daily affirmations arose out of what is called “The Law of Attraction,” popularized by author Rhonda Byrne in The Secret. This book was featured by Oprah in her book club in the early 2000s, and fleshed out by one of her favorite spiritual gurus, Eckhart Tolle. When The Secret first came out it was viewed skeptically by Christians and secularists alike. The idea of the practitioner bringing some d...

Apple TV+’s new six-part limited series, The Essex Serpent, based on Sarah Perry’s bestselling and award-winning 2016 novel of the same name,1 is a bit more nuanced than the standard prestige television fare, being less a series of intersecting parallel plots and more about combustible characters with nebulous motivations who collide at key points. Emmy Award-winning Homeland (2011–2020) alumna Cl...

This Postmodern Realities episode is a conversation with Journal author Joshua R. Farris about his online-exclusive, “Why are we down here still working in the dark? (A Web TV Series Review of Severance)”. https://www.equip.org/article/why-are-we-down-here-still-working-in-the-dark-a-web-tv-series-review-of-severance/ Locked articles are online exclusive content that are only available to subscrib...

Now that Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, what’s next for the pro-life movement? This episode of the Postmodern Realities Podcast is a very deep dive into issues now being raised in a post-Roe climate with Journal author Jay Watts. More will also be discussed in an article in the future 45:02/03 edition of the Christian Research Journal to be released later this year. To subscribe and make...