Stories Are Soul Food

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Have you ever wondered why God makes it so much easier to remember a novel than, say, your own memories? He appears to put a priority on received or secondhand experience (think of his blessing and admonition to Doubting Thomas). This SASF launches off into a discussion of how to interview your own (elder...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Time to discuss a movie that's on both Brian and Nate's Top-10 list: Studio Ghibli's "Spirited Away." (Consider this a bonus LAMPC, because Nate won't let it be a real one.) But first, a quick follow-up from a listener regarding Slumdog Millionaire: Does Salim's sacrifice make him a Jesus figure? To help...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one -- and you do: You've got bad taste. Inspired by That One Review which accuses SASF of being overly arrogant in subjective areas, Brian asks Nate how many bad takes are just because a person has bad taste. (We won't spoil the answer for you.) Th...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . It's time for the second every LAMP Club -- and we know you enjoyed/suffered through "Slumdog Millionaire" as much as we did. But first, Nate has a tragic story about airports and the coming collapse of our workforce (if you're not in the mood for airport depression, skip to minute 29:46 for the start of...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . The question is simple: Do you want to be like God? If so, you need to buy your kids a pet, because He filled a world with 'em. (Is it that simple? Listen to find out.) You'll meet a billion garter snakes in this episode along with Timothy the Owl, Odd the Mouse (tragedy of sentimentality there), Scout th...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . You want lessons for life? Meditate on the book of Kings. Stories are soul food, even (especially?) when they're true. Brian asks Nate about Solomon and a recent claim which suggested we might not see King Solomon in heaven. The guys reframe the discussion of Solomon's story into a lesson for parents and...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Find out next Month's LAMP Club movie pick within the first thirty seconds of this podcast. And then stay for a delightful discussion of the Prince of Egypt and why Nate wrote a story called "The Rise and Fall of Circumcision"; why Lewis's wood between the worlds kicks the multiverse's butt; why time trav...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Find out how good you are at movies! We know you've all watched the Fabelmans (or you thought about watching it really hard). Some of you have sent in questions -- and one or two complaints. Now it's time to have the first inaugural Look at Moving Pictures Club with Brian and Nate. Questions about Spielbe...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . This episode begins with an update on Gabe Rench and the City of Moscow getting swatted by a federal judge -- expensively. Not every victory comes quickly, and we can learn from this long, slow slog. The guys meander from this moment into an excellent discussion on training sons to be aggressive. This is...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . The guys discuss a typological observation which compared Noah to Christ -- and did so terribly. This leads into an interesting discussion of biblical types and anti-types -- and how to tell if such an observation is worth anything. Nate explains why we should be the flood, not the Ark: the Benedict Optio...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . It's Severance SZN! Like many in the Canon office, Brian watched Ben Stiller's new show "Severance" and, amidst the story-grip that Severance caused, has many questions...mostly having to do with goats. Nate answers them emphatically as usual -- and this provides viewers with a nice lesson in thematic fil...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Brian bothers Nate with balloons for the big episode (and a big pod announcement). Happy ONE HUNDREDTH birthday to SASF! How does that math check out? Well, folks, listen to find out.... But before we get to the big announcement, the guys heard from enough of you regarding A.I. and ChatGPT that they spend...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . You may have seen the new robot making waves: ChatGPT is sort of a glorified search engine which (who??) can perform detailed reasoning and compose answers to complicated topics. For example, it can give researched, chapter-length answers to questions like "Explain quantum computing in simple terms" or "E...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Merry Christmas! Nate tells Brian about a recent trip to Manhattan and the experience of watching Handel's Messiah at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Mecca for aspiring secular artists. The guys break down the universal, global appeal of the performance and what it means for Christian art....

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Warming to a familiar SASF theme, the guys discuss why Die Hard is, indisputably, a Christmas movie. But first, they discuss the Grinch, and why we like him more than Cindy-Lou Hoo, and why Tiny Tim is  so very annoying, and many other Christmas movies (usually filtered to a greater or lesser degree). Chr...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Nate wishes you Merry Christmas by means of a New Saint Andrews video he narrated, titled "Let Joy Erupt" (listen to it in this episode). After the rush of appearing in that video's B-roll with his family, Brian opens up about his sense of style being criticized as "hipster trad" by one of the video's cri...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Why hasn't there been a SASF episode for weeks? Because basketball coaching. But turns out sports is a fantastic metaphor for life -- if handled correctly. But if your kid isn't getting the point, better to have them play video games. In this context, Brian asks Nate about his 10 year goals. Nate waxes el...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Say you met a highschool kid who was confused about the biblical view of gender: would you give them a book or a movie? The answer to this question is probably not what you expect, and it highlights the way that conservatives get the gender and sexuality conversation wrong. The guys begin this discussion...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Parenting isn't easy, and Rachel Jankovic's "Sir Badalot and the Cranky Danky Dragon" gives parents the tools to talk with their fat-faced toddlers about emotional self-control. Most parents do that by resorting to the poor parenting tactics of 1) emotional distraction, and 2) emotional reaction. Turns ou...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . This episode juxtaposes abortion and hospitality. We live in a post-Roe v. Wade world -- can we apply those lessons to storytelling now? How do evangelicals do with that cultural fight? Does fiction have a place in it? (Not the way you probably mean it.) The guys dig deeper into the themes of Episode 90,...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . A listener writes in to find out why, as a pastor's kid, Nate uses expletives like "hell" and "damn" in Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl. (Shh, don't mention that Nate has written worse.) This leads to a discussion of the sliding scale of bad words -- truth is, no word is bad intrinsically. Seriously: a word's...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Here's an interesting truth that Nate once tried out on his roommate: pure, syllogistic reasoning is not persuasive. In fact, unvarnished truth does not "prove" anything -- by that we mean that it does not obligate belief as well as, say, story might. And you'll notice that people seldom believe the thing...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Is a book with a good witch a bad book? The guys use the Wizard of Oz as a jumping off point for this lengthy discussion of magic, which listeners know is a favorite SASF hobbyhorse. Nate claims that moderns have lost an appreciation for the miraculous in an attempt to describe the natural. In reality, ev...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . Episode ocho-ocho is about narrative architecture, but that sounds boring so we made the headline more interesting, having been inspired by one of SASF's favorite novels, Evangellyfish. In point of fact, though, this week's episode is fantastic: The guys get into a discussion of favorite (living) novelist...

IT'S HERE! Pre-Order the 4th installment of the Ashtown Burial Series at ashtownburials.com . The guys discuss feedback from the Rings of Power sort-of-watchalong. Then, in a shocking turn of events, one of the guys is accused of being too critical of a film--and the critical one is Brian. Nate defends the honor of Top Gun 2, and even a bit of Cobra Kai (always with filters, people). They get into...